This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.
There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul--to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.
For soon, very soon do men forget Their friends upon whom Death's seal is set.
The more we sympathize with excellence, the more we go out of self, the more we love, the broader and deeper is our personality.
Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.
Liberty is an old fact; it has had its heroes and its martyrs in almost every age. As I look back through the vista of centuries, I can see no end of the ranks of those who have toiled and suffered in its cause, and who wear upon their breasts its stars of the legion of honor.
We have not the innocence of Eden; but by God's help and Christ's example we may have the victory of Gethsemane.
It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.
Death makes a beautiful appeal to charity. When we look upon the dead form, so composed and still, the kindness and the love that are in us all come forth.
Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer.
Mercy. That is the gospel. The whole of it in one word.
Death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.
Physically, man is but an atom in space, and a pulsation in time. Spiritually, the entire outward universe receives significance from him, and the scope of his existence stretches beyond the stars.
Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world.
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.
The worst effect of sin is within and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.
All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable until we refer to the paternity of God. It hangs a huge blot in the universe until the orb of divine love rises behind it. In that apposition we detect its meaning. It appears to us but a finite shadow as it passes across the disk of infinite light.
There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong!
Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity.
Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.
I know a good many people, I think, who are bigots, and who know they are bigots, and are sorry for it, but they dare not be anything else.
The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.
Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.
The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction.
In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state.
