Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

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.

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.

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.