We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites.

The soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.

Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.

The unmerciful man is most certainly an unblessed man. His sympathies are all dried up; he is afflicted with a chronic jaundice, and lives timidly and darkly in a little, narrow rat-hole of distrust.

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.

Down below all the crust of human conceptions, of human ideas, Christ sank an artesian well into a source of happiness so pure and blessed that even yet the world does not believe in it.

Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.