S. W. Denton

“ Young men of Kirtland, awake to intelligence, and slumber not. And as you expect to become useful to the world, arouse and brush away the cobwebs of slothful and degrading ignorance, improve your intellectual faculties by untiring research and investigation, and by so doing your light will ere long become extended like the spreading rays of the morning sun upon the mountains, and give guidance to the foot-steps of thousands of our race. ”

“ That ignorance is the foundation or source of much, if not all misery, the history of past ages most clearly evinces. Indeed, were each individual to consult his own experience, or extend his researches through the vast expanse of human intelligence for proof in point, he would only learn, that a knowledge of every fact possible, whether relating to occurrences in the moral or physical world, is essentially necessary to the happiness and enjoyment of mankind, and that in proportion as ignorance abounds, vice and wretchedness must increase also. ”

“ We must improve our leisure moments in perusing good books, in calculating and extending the operations of our own minds, and in acquiring that intelligence which can alone fit us for acting with honor to ourselves and usefulness to our country, that our names may be hailed by posterity among those of the benefactors of mankind, where we now recognize that of a Franklin, a Jefferson, and a Fulton. ”