We never know the love of the parent for the child till we become parents.

There are sorrows that are not painful, but are of the nature of some acids, and give piquancy and flavor to life.

If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.

No man can tell if he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

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.

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

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.