I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama.
I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one’s thoughts.
The day is ours, and what the day has shown.
T he test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.
But there is not space to mention all my friends and indeed there are things about them hidden behind the wings of the cherubim, things to sacred to set forth in cold print.
The poets have taught us how full of wonders is the night; and the night of blindness has its wonders, too. The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses.
With a feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.
It is an unspeakable boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no interpretation.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence...
My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
The German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement, sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he speaks, it is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst if he did not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul. Then, too, there is in German literature a fine reserve which I like; but its chief glory is the recognition I find in it of the redeeming potency.
I used to feel along the square stiff boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell, would find the first violets and lilies.
As I wander through the dark, encountering difficulties, I am aware of encouraging voices that murmur from the spirit realm. I sense a holy passion pouring down from the springs of Infinity. I thrill to music that beats with the pulses of God. Bound to suns and planets by invisible cords, I feel the flame of eternity in my soul.
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.
Character is not achieved by ease and quiet, it develops through trial and suffering.
Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
The thought that my dear Heavenly Father is always near, giving me abundantly of all those things, which truly enrich life and make it sweet and beautiful, makes every deprivation seem of little moment compared with the countless blessings I enjoy.
Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.
How easy it is to fly on paper wings!