“Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.”

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

A man lives by believing something.

Naps are a way of traveling painlessly through time into the future.

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don’t happen at all.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.

There are remedies for all things but death.

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.

It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind’s labour.

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

I believe that we should own the fruits of our labor and the assets of our creations.