All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of Him but in broken and imperfect words.

This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.

Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying.

Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

Experience is the mother of custom.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

The mystery of history is an insoluble problem.