Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.

Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekkar said he was the first true gentleman.

The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.