Affliction comes to the believer not to make him sad, but sober; not to make him sorry, but wise. Even as the plow enriches the field so that the seed is multiplied a thousandfold, so affliction should magnify our joy and increase our spiritual harvest.

Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and they would end if we would stand upon our feet and go whither He would have us go.

They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted.

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.