Refinement is the lifting of one’s self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.
A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.
Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.
Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.
As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.
Wealth in activity – capital with all its friction – is far safer than invested wealth lying dead.
Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.
Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.
There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.
There is so much that is deaf and dumb in man, and so much that is paralyzed, so much that is shrunken, that nothing short of a miraculous touch of re-creation can make them at death perfect beings.
God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.
A practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt.
Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.
It takes a man to make a devil.
Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans, on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, freemen; on this side, disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed as the sons of God.
Love is the only thing that has a perennial root, and that death cannot touch. It is the spirit that constitutes the central influence of human sympathy, of love, of love untarnished, untouched: and when you arise in the other sphere you will find that your personal identity will be that identity which is framed round about the great, glowing, central, summer influence of Love.