We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - like a carrier pigeon.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.