Lord, help me to begin to begin.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.

Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.

I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal.

Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.

It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.