Man without religion is the creature of circumstances.
Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head.
A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman.
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others.
Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.
There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings, – the clearest proof that it is out of its element.
Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent.
It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet.
Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.
A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.
What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.
Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.
The virtue of paganism was strength; the virtue of Christianity is obedience.
Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.
The ancients dreaded death: the Christian can only fear dying.
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are impure.
The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful but whether it is true. When we wish to go to a place, we do not ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but whether it is the right road.
Man is a mixed being, made up of a spiritual soul and of a fleshly body; the angels are pure spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created and finite in all respects, free from decay, free from the power of death, whereas God is infinite and uncreated.
Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.
Friendship closes its eye rather than see the moon eclipsed; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.