Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule.

That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our wishes--in changing the passionate desire into still submission, the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender--is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of true prayer.

The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive-berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased; an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.

It is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the situation.

Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.

It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits, than to say that our lives and habits depend on our opinions.

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.