Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.

The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. ... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.

Many men build as cathedrals are built-the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.

Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has set in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good, in its place, as conscience or veneration. Praying can no more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying.

The religion that fosters intolerance needs another Christ to die for it.

The word of God tends to make large-minded noble-minded men.

It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.