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

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

I learned that it is better, a thousandfold , for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it.

Which of us is other than a secret to all but God!

Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?

Heaven...a place where everything that is not music is silence.