“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.”

“Envy is as evil a thing as arrogance.”

“It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready.”

“We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.”

“Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another's keeping.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . . She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomi Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

“In the night, imagining some fear,How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.”

“Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues.”

“And it is very much lamented,... That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye That you might see your shadow.”

“Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.”

“While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.”

“We must use a good deal of economy in our wood, never cutting down new, where we can make the old do.”