Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

Human improvement is from within outward.

There is always a part of our being into which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives are yet unable to enter.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.