Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.

God's finger can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

We are not made for law, we are made for love.

It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return.

All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us.

To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.