Be sure of the foundation of your life. Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, build on opinion or custom, or what you guess is true. Make it a matter of certainty and science.--_Thomas Starr King._ Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it was its continuance which should have taught us its value.--_Hannah More._ The soul occupied with great ideas, best performs small duties.--_James Martineau._ Christianity wants nothing so much in the world as sunny people, and the old are hungrier for love than for bread. The Oil of Joy is very cheap, and if you can help the poor with a Garment of Praise, it will be better for them than blankets.--_Drummond._ You will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of others’ faults. In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it; and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves, when their time comes.--_Ruskin._ When you hold persistently to the successful mental state, you become a magnet drawing other people to aid you as you in return can aid them. But if you are much of the time despondent and gloomy, you become the negative magnet driving the best from you.--_Prentice Mulford._ There are two days about which nobody should ever worry, and these are yesterday and to-morrow.--_Robert J. Burdette._ A child, however educated, is still untaught if by his teaching we have not emphasized his individual character, if we have not strengthened his will and its guide and guardian, the mind.--_David Starr Jordan._ “I am only a child who is lying On the bosom of Infinite Love. I speak not of living or dying; I know not of sorrow or crying; My thoughts are dwelling above. “The spring of the life that is flowing Is hidden with Christ in God. Not yet the mystery knowing, I feel that the peace is growing, As a river grows deep and broad. “All I need without price I am buying By my trust in the Goodness above. There’s an end to my yearning and sighing, For just like a child I am lying On the bosom of Infinite Love.” The optimist, by his superior wisdom and insight, is making his own heaven, and in the degree that he makes his own heaven, is he helping to make one for all the world beside.--_R. W. Trine._ Do not let your head run upon that which is none of your own, but pick out some of the best of your circumstances, and consider how eagerly you would wish for them, were they not in your possession.--_Marcus Aurelius._ Insist on your self; never imitate. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from these. If you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice.--_Emerson._