That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the eager pursuit of worldly aggrandizement are baffled; for they are very like a train going down an inclined plane - putting on the brake is not pleasant, but it keeps the car on the track.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.

I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.