Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

You youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback.

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.