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.

All the sobriety which' religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces.

A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.

Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.

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.

A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest.