We are apt to mistake our vocation by looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and by stepping over the ordinary ones that lie directly in the road before us.

Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.

The soul on earth is an immortal guest.

A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.

It is the large aggregate of small things perpetually occurring that robs me of all my time. The expense of learning to read might have been spared in my education, for I never read.