The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world.

All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.