In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.

In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.