Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.

When I contrast the loving Jesus, comprehending all things in his ample and tender charity, with those who profess to bear his name, marking their zeal by what they do not love, it seems to me as though men, like the witches of old, had read the Bible backward, and had taken incantations out of it for evil, rather than inspiration for good.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

Skepticism has never founded empires, established principals, or changed the world's heart. The great doers in history have always been people of faith.

All evil, in fact the very existence of evil, is inexplicable until we refer to the paternity of God. It hangs a huge blot in the universe until the orb of divine love rises behind it. In that apposition we detect its meaning. It appears to us but a finite shadow as it passes across the disk of infinite light.