Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.

The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.

I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.

Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellectof man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

How can we understand forgiveness if we haven't recognized the depth of our sin?

It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things.