Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.

No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.

How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No, there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to him; a constant looking to him for grace.

Once, in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature, — loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.

A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.