The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

All virtue lies in individual action, in inward energy, in self determination. There is no moral worth in being swept away by a crowd even toward the best objective.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal

One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.

Influence is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind.

A clear thought, a pure affection, a resolute act of a virtuous will, have a dignity of quite another kind, and far higher than accumulations of brick and granite and plaster and stucco, however cunningly put together.