The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched- they must be felt with the heart.

Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of...

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

Life is a succesion of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

the bible gives me a deep comforting sense that (things seen are temporal,and things unseen are eternal.

Your success and happiness lie in you.

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I...

On Power:It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our...

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of...

Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid,more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with...

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.

There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.

Truly I have looked into the very heart of darkness, and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning. What if all dark, discouraging...

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face...

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.

Relationships are like Rome — difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘golden age’, and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat...

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of...

For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane...

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Literature is my Utopia

When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with...

It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much,...

It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to...

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within

I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow...

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world–the company of those who have known suffering.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things… But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness,...

Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education–noisy-throated frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until, forgetting their embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little...

I realized that the wonder is not that conditions are so bad, but that humanity has advanced so far in spite of them. & now I am in the fight to change things. I may...

The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to...

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the...

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world

I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many...

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the...

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

La vie est une aventure audacieuse ou alors elle n’est rien.

The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.

Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or...

What does this beauty or than music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?’ In the most evident sense they...

Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.