When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.

In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.

His glory Jesus Christ does not consist in beingplaced without the confines of history; a more real worship is paid to him, by showing that the whole of history is incomprehensible without him.

None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, — such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul."