The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.

Lord, bid war's trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.

It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference "the president" refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.

The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.