Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.
The first evil choice or act is linked to the second; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny.
No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.
Some persons are exaggerators by temperament. They do not mean untruth, but their feelings are strong, and their imaginations vivid, so that their statements are largely discounted by those of calm judgment and cooler temperament. They do not realize that we always weaken what we exaggerate.
Let your holidays be associated with great public events, and they may be the life of patriotism as well as a source of relaxation and personal employment.
Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it.
Ridicule may be the evidence of with or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.
All things are ordered by God, but His providence takes in our free agency, as well as His own sovereignty.
A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it.
Unbelief, in distinction from disbelief, is a confession of ignorance where honest inquiry might easily find the truth. – “Agnostic” is but the Greek for “ignoramus.”
True art is reverent imitation of God.
Whatever our place allotted to us by Providence that for us is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us, not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it.
My books are my tools, and the greater their variety and perfection the greater the help to my literary work.
Indolence is the dry rot of even a good mind and a good character; the practical uselessness of both. It is the waste of what might be a happy and useful life.
Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result.
Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.
Most controversies would soon be ended, if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions.
Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!
Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.
Never be so brief as to become obscure.