Infidelity is one of those coinages,-a mass of base money that won't pass current with any heart that loves truly, or any head that thinks correctly. And infidels are poor sad creatures; they carry about them a load of dejection and desolation, not the less heavy that it is invisible. It is the fearful blindness of the soul.

Prayer does not enable us to do a greater work for God. Prayer is a greater work for God.

A man's needs are few. The simpler the life, therefore, the better. Indeed, only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends.

Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it.

Shakespeare is an intellectual miracle.

With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness.

Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.... The heart must have something to cling to.