The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged, all-nourishing earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much more her darling man?

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.

It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.

The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.