Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

This is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and no.

I wonder what day I shall die on - one passes year by year over one's death day, as one might pass over one's grave.

Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.

It is not God's way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among the people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.