If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road

Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands.

Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence.

What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

The more sincere we are in our belief, as a rule, the less demonstrative we are.

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel.