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

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.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept of the stretch.

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.

A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman: a gentleman, in the vulgar superficial way of understanding the word, is the Devil's Christian.

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.