He that lives by the sight of the eye may grow blind.
The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.
Our earthly loves are but so many silver steps leading us up to the great golden love of God.
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.
Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is to be cured of sin.
There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.
When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.
A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.
There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.
Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.
There is an equator that runs just under the nose: all that live below the equator are animals; all that live above it are men.
There are materials enough in every man’s mind to make a hell there.
The sphere that is deepest, most unexplored, and most unfathomable, the wonder and glory of God’s thought and hand, is our own soul!
Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.
Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.
One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.
This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.
No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant.