Why should my love be powerless to help another?
I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
By all means rid yourself of an impoverished faith.
As cold as everything looks in winter, the sun has not forsaken us. He has only drawn away for a little, for good reasons, one of which is that we may learn that we cannot do without him.
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth.
Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?
No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it – no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather!
Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is life.
No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.
Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.
Oh the folly of any mind that would explain God before obeying Him! That would map out the character of God instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?
It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.
When I look like this into the blue sky, it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awe-inspiring loving-kindness.
Beauty and sadness always go together.
To be kind neither hurts nor compromises.
The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
It is only by loving a thing that you can make it yours.
I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of Nature, always kept it beautiful.
I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word “doctrine,” as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.