It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.

Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.

Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, that he falls down and does reverence to.

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.

(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.