We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.
Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
Laugh at your friends, And if your friends are sore; So much the better, You may laugh the more.
Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. . . . There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.
Some men think that the globe is a sponge that God puts into their hands to squeeze for their own garden or flower-pot.
It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.
The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health.
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people . . . is a fertile source of suffering.
Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.
Many a man has been dined out of his religion, and his politics, and his manhood, almost.
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.
Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy.
Sharp men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce quick.
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern.
No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.
Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
A man who does not love praise is not a full man.
Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.
Victories that come cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.
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