Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.
Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction.
Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. The more we are obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish.
Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic.
To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.
Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another – too often ending in the loss of both.
What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we lost.
The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves – our weakness, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.
He who can suppress a moments anger may prevent a day of sorrow.
This world is the land of the dying; the next is the land of the living.
Apothegms are the wisdom of the past condensed for the instruction and guidance of the present.
Thoroughly to teach another is the best way to learn for yourself.
We never do evil so thoroughly and heartily as when led to it by an honest but perverted, because mistaken, conscience.
Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.
Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. True prayer always receives what it asks, or something better.
Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong.
One of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: do your work well and then be ready to depart when God shall call.
To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin.