Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don’t whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.
Never excuse yourself.
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.
The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.
A library is but the soul’s burying ground. It is a land of shadows.
Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.
Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
Joy is more divine than sorrow, for joy is bread and sorrow is medicine.
The God of the Bible is a moral monstrosity.
It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.
Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.
The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race.
A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.