Life isn’t like a book. Life isn’t logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us – when we succeed, it betrays us.
We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men’s heads.
Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.
To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.
There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.
Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.
We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.
Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.
Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.