What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrange ment — God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out of them.

To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another.

Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.

Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.

No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine--what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?

The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.