Many a man who might walk over burning ploughshares into heaven stumbles from the path because there is gravel in his shoes.

If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame.

No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love.

Conscience is its own readiest accuser.

A life is black, whiten it as you will.

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.

Truth is the root, but human sympathy is the flower of practical life.