You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.
There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.
Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.
There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing.
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature.
We may cover a multitude of sins with the white robe of charity.
Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long, – it is exceedingly short.
Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient.
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.
Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow.
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. It is a blessed baptism which gives the first waking thoughts into the bosom of God.
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother’s heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.
Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.
Nature would be scarcely worth a puff of the empty wind if it were not that all Nature is but a temple, of which God is the brightness and the glory.
It is necessary, if one would read aright, that he should read at least two newspapers, representing both sides of important subjects.
There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer.
We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way; but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, he is in heaven, and not on earth.
Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man’s whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.