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.

If one's conscience be dead as a stone, it is as heavy too.

Certainly, truth should be strenuous and bold; but the strongest things are not always the noisiest, as any one may see who compares scolding with logic.

Pure felicity is reserved for the heavenly life; it grows not in an earthly soil.

This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.

Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.