It would not be more unreasonable to transplant a favorite flower out of black earth into gold dust than it is for a person to let money-getting harden his heart into contempt, or into impatience, of the little attentions, the merriments and the caresses of domestic life.

I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.

It is from out of the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul. God comes in, and is everyone in me.

Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.

Duty reaches down the ages in its effects, and into eternity; and when the man goes about it resolutely, it seems to me now as though his footsteps were echoing beyond the stars, though only heard faintly in the atmosphere of this world.

The day of our decease will be that of our coming of age; and with our last breath we shall become free of the universe. And in some region of infinity, and from among its splendors, this earth will be looked back on like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to duty.

Do we not hear voices, gentle and great, and some of them like the voices of departed friends,— do we not hear them saying to us, Come up hither?