The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality.

We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

Give us courage and gaiety and the quient mind . . .

There is no music like a little river's . . . It takes the mind out-of-doors . . . and . . . it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.