creases self-conceit. In every
high work and in men worthy of it, success is
always sure to bring humility.

Our strength is measured by our plastic power...
Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the
architect can make them into something else.

A man who lives right, and is right, has more
power in his silence than another man by his
words.

Oh! believe me that no man lives at his best to
whom life is not becoming better and better,
always aware of greater and greater forces,
capable of diviner and diviner deeds and joys.

[Illustration: Sunset and pond]

God is omnipotent, and man is immortal.
Therefore be patient and work. The end shall
certainly be joy, not sorrow. The stone shall
roll away and the dead come forth.

Optimism is a belief in a great purpose
underlying the world for good, absolutely certain
to fulfil itself somewhere, somehow. That must
have been what God saw when He looked upon the
world and called it "good."

A hundred men stand on the shore and say: "There
is no land beyond." One brave and trustful man
like Columbus, believes that the complete world
is complete, and sails for a fair land beyond the
sea, and finds it.

Put your faith where it will be safe; and the
only place where a faith ever can be safe is in
the shrine of an action.

[Illustration: Flowers]

I must have some notion in general of what I am
alive for, or I cannot live rightly from hour to
hour this evening and to-morrow morning.

Give our lives room to grow to truth, and they
will grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen,
and they will richen too.

The only real way to "prepare to meet thy God" is
to live with thy God so that to meet Him shall be
nothing strange.

It is not good for a man to devote himself to
preparation for dying. It is preparation for
living that you need.

Our virtue should not be a deed, or a work, but a
growth--a growth like a tree's, always rising
higher from its own inward strength and sap.

The moment that the face is turned away from the
dead past, and looks toward the living future, a
new power comes. Hope is awake, and hope is
infinite.

[Illustration: Flowers]

The gracious mercy that binds Omnipotence a
willing servant to every humble prayer!

Self-restraint and honesty and independence, if
they are the crown upon the head of a benignant
despotism, are the very lifeblood in the veins of
a self-governing republic.

To be calm and serene