Books! The chosen depositories of the thoughts, the opinions, and the aspirations of mighty intellects; like wondrous mirrors that have caught and fixed bright images of souls that have passed away; like magic lyres, whose masters have bequeathed them to the world, and which yet, of themselves, ring with unforgotten music, while the hands that touched their chords have crumbled into dust. Books! they are the embodiments and manifestations of departed minds--the living organs through which those who are dead yet speak to us.

I know a good many people, I think, who are bigots, and who know they are bigots, and are sorry for it, but they dare not be anything else.

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

Into what boundless life, does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being--positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy.

A man's love for his native land lies deeper than any logical expression, among those pulses of the heart which vibrate to the sanctities of home, and to the thoughts which leap up from his father's graves.

A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it--when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine.

Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity.