The cloudy weather melts at length into beauty, and the brightest smiles of the heart are born of its tears.
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another’s place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.
How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion.
Most people who commit a sin count on some personal benefit to be derived therefrom, but profanity has not even this excuse.
The eye is the inlet to the soul, and it is well to beware of him whose visual organs avoid your honest regard.
It is what we give up, not what we lay up, that adds to our lasting store.
That kind of discipline whose pungent severity is in the manifestations of paternal love, compassion, and tenderness is the most sure of its object.
Servility is disgusting to a truly noble character, and engenders only contempt.
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.
That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.
Rage is mental imbecility.
You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker.
Purity in person and in morals is true godliness.
Prosperity is very liable to bring pride among the other goods with which it endows an individual; it is then that prosperity costs too dear.
There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense.
Envy may justly be called “the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;” it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, a fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul.
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
A wise Providence consoles our present afflictions by joys borrowed from the future.