if have got my spindle and my distaff ready--my pen and mind--never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax.

It is the life in literature that acts upon life.

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.

I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to which God appoints all those whom he has favored with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful in the world. He never institutes a channel for the passage of His bounties that those bounties do not enrich and beautify.

My idea of the Christian religion is, that it is an inspiration and its vital consequences--an inspiration and a life--God's life breathed into a man and breathed through a man--the highest inspiration and the highest life of every soul which it inhabits; and, furthermore, that the soul which it inhabits can have no high issue which is not essentially religious.

Preceptive wisdom that has not been vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life.

There are crowds who trample a flower into the dust without thinking once that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God under their heel.