The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly, slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the sea. Then its very ways of misery will divide, and become to us a wall, on the right side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before our eyes and we land safe on the opposite sore.

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, Outward bound.

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people - as may be noticed of most young children - does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.

Silence sweeter is than speech.

... what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" - a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world.