The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.

But there is no veil like light--no adamantine armor against hurt like the truth.

What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.

How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?

No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.

It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.