You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.

Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this child's want by grown people . . . is a fertile source of suffering.

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

There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them.