Temptation does not make the sin, it lies ready in the heart.

Repentance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it.

How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain, when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity!

parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius.

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.

There is one single fact that one may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity; namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death-bed.

The ubiquity of the Divine presence is the only true support, and I am sometimes astonished how persons, who evidently do not possess that grand source of consolation, keep up their spirits under trials and difficulties. It must be owing to careless tempers and nerves of brass.