Works without faith are like a fish without water, it wants the element it should live in. A building without a basis cannot stand; faith is the foundation, and every good action is as a stone laid.

The greatest results in life are usually attained by common sense and perseverance.

Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer--it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend.

A combed writing will cost both sweat and the rubbing of the brain. And combed I wish it, not frizzled or curled.

It is a most unhappy state to be at a distance with God: man needs no greater infelicity than to be left to himself.

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.