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Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good.

Thus worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of the pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill.

But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body.

Throw away, in the first place, all ambition beyond that of doing the day's work well.

Take no thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing: it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.

The pure men of old slept without dreams, and waked without anxiety.