It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.

Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly impossible, and what will be the remainder?

Hear Everything and judge for yourself

Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.

Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!