One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful, if the race was to survive. But now, to preserve the race, it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.
Not all the military poems that I have read have roused in me an heroic desire to welcome my brother home with a bullet in his heart.
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
No one knows better than I the bitter denials of life. But I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.
No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.
No doubt, the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.
Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.
My optimism is grounded in two worlds, myself and what is about me. I demant that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true.
My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence, and, behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness!
