I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of Nature, always kept it beautiful.

I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.

If it were not for the outside world, we would have no inside world to understand things by. Least of all could we understand God without these millions of sights and sounds and scents and motions, weaving their endless harmonies. They come out of His heart to let us know a little of what is in it.

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

God Himself - His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes - for it is but an outward change - will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.