Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Work is victory.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end. though you can render no reason. Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.