Self-contemplation is apt to end in self-conceit.

I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?

A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.

Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.