“There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.”

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.”

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”

“In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.”

“Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows.”

“Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.”

“A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.”