He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel.
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.
Men can make an idol of the Bible.
It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.
No cradle for an emperor’s child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.
The world is God’s workshop for making men in.
This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.
Selfishness at the expense of others happiness is demonism.
Let the GRATEFUL HEART sweep through the day that it may recognize in every hour some sweet blessing.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
A person can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it, than one could suddenly grow from a child’s stature to an adult’s without harm.
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.
Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.
I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.
Be a hard master to yourself – and be lenient to everybody else.
There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.
True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.
An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.
In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion.
That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.