“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.”

“Wolves and bears, they say, casting their savagery aside, have done like offices of pity.”

“The weary sun hath made a golden setAnd by the bright tract of his fiery carGives token of a goodly day to-morrow.”

“Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.”

“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”

“For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?”

“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.”

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

“Local conservation programs can help our communities shape thoughtful growth.”

“Fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.”

“Adult males are what their moms designed them.”

“Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference.”

“The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.”

“A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.”

“Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings.”

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

“The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all.”

“If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.”

“For the poor wren (The most diminutive of birds) will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.”

“So loving to my mother,That he might not beteem the winds of heaven,Visit her face' too roughly.”

“Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.”

“What e'er thou art, act well thy part.”

“'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.”

“Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus.”

“Earth's a howling wilderness,Truculent with fraud and force.”

“Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race.”

“The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of the present travel.”