If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.

He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child.

Health is a great blessing--competence obtained by honorable industry is a great blessing--and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but, that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing. With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.

He went like one that hath been stunn'd, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.

Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)