Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.

No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them.

There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.

Influence is exerted by every human being from the hour of birth to that of death.

Some souls are ennobled and elevated by seeming misfortunes, which then become blessings in disguise.

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.

Even yet Christ Jesus has to lie out in waste places very often, because there is no room for him in the inn--no room for him in our hearts, because of our worldliness. There is no room for him even in our politics and religion. There is no room in the inn, and we put him in the manger, and he lies outside our faith, coldly and dimly conceived by us.