Men would not be so hasty to abandon the world either as monks or as suicides, did they but see the jewels of wisdom and faith which are scattered so plentifully along its paths; and lacking which no soul can come again from beyond the grave to gather.

Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.

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.

To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves.

With a mind not diseased, a holy life is a life of hope; and at the end of it, death is a great act of hope.

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?