Life comes before literature, as the material comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.

It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.

The best advisors . . . give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is.

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.