They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.

Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you love your children.

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.

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

As I said to Speedicut, it's hell in the diplomatic.

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

Timely service, like timely gifts, is doubled in value.