Prayer is not getting man's will done in heaven, but getting God's will done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness.

For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love.

The love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction?

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past.

"The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good;" and without claiming for an instant that title of good for my book, I do not doubt that many a good book has remained unwritten, or, perhaps, being written, has remained unpublished, because there floated before the mind's eye of the author, or possible author, the ideal of a better or a best, which has put him out of all conceit with his good.

Speak but little and well, if you would be esteemed as a man of merit.

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.