It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.

Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.

Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.

One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.

A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.

The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.