The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.

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

The pen is the tongue of the hand; a silent utterer of words for the eye.

It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.

Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.

None love to speak so much, when the mood of speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn.