“The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.”
“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.”
“Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.”
“If the cut of the costume indicates intellect and talent, then the color indicates temper and heart.”
“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 difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.”
“Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.”
“Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.”
“Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.”
“By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.”
“In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.”
“For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.”
“History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.”
“No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.”
“A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.”
“It is not a lucky word, this name ''impossible''; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.”
“I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.”
“There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.”
“Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
“Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.”
“[M]en's hearts ought not to be set against one another; but set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only.”
“The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.”
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
“No conquest can ever become permanent which does not show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors.”
“All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.”
“Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.”
“Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.”
“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”
“If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.”
“To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.”