“The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.”

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.

The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted.

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.

Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.

Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.

Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.

There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.

The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. Win hearts, said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, and you have all men’s hearts and purses.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

Out of life’s storm I carried only a few ideas – and not one feeling.

One must live to build one’s house, and not build one’s house to live in.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.