Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action.

Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections.

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.

The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful but whether it is true. When we wish to go to a place, we do not ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but whether it is the right road.

Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent.