Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,--like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.