Nothing good bursts forth all at once. The lightning may dart out of a black cloud; but the day sends his bright heralds before him, to prepare the world for his coming.

Man is a mixed being, made up of a spiritual soul and of a fleshly body; the angels are pure spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created and finite in all respects, free from decay, free from the power of death, whereas God is infinite and uncreated.

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.

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

The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience.

A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt fated support them through great actions.

Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which God has manifested to us?