An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.

God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.

Living with a saint is more grueling than being one.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.

The light in the world comes principally from two sources,-the sun, and the student's lamp.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.