A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness!

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

Every green thing loves to die in bright colors. The vegetable cohorts march glowing out of the year in flaming dresses, as if to leave this earth were a triumph and not a sadness. It is never nature that is sad, but only we, that dare not look back on the past, and that have not its prophecy of the future in our bosoms.

One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.