There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin.

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

Cost is the father and compensation the mother of progress.

I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view.

Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.

Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you -- the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not.

We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation--have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.