Leisure is gone,--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.