It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low pitch: they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand and expect the least.

It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.

Gems, in fact, are a species of mineral flowers; they are the blossoms of the dark, hard mine; and what they want in perfume, they make up in durability.

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

The same quickness which makes a mind buoyant in gladness often makes it gentlest and most sympathetic in sorrow.

The soul awakes ... between two dim eternities - the eternal past, the eternal future.