A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

You will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles.

Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the Inner Life.

There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.

History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another.

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.

I know no study that will take you nearer the way to happiness than the study of nature -- and I include in the study of nature not only things and their forces, but also mankind and their ways, and the moulding of the affections and the will into an earnest desire not only to be happy, but to create happiness.

The worst calamity: 'To have eyes and fail to see.'

How easy it is to fly on paper wings!

How spiritually blind are men that they fail to see that we are bound together. We rise or fall together; we are dwarfed or godlike, free or chained, together.

This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.

So much has been given me I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.

The clatter of a changing world is not pleasant, and those who have enjoyed the comforts and protection of the old order may be shocked and unhappy when they behold the vigorous young builders of a new world sweeping away their time-honored antiquities.

Christmas Day is the festival of optimism.

During the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, the day is ours, and what the day has shown.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

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