A noble deed is a step towards heaven.

The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

I look into your great brown eyes, where love and loyal homage shine, and wonder where the difference lies between your soul and mine!.

A man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best rewards and life's best defences.

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.

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.

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.