All quotes

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.

The aim of moral discipline is to purify the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God.

It tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.

At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance.

Now military governments, established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection.

A race cannot be purified from without.

Let us then, here and now, recognize this force and resolve to make the most of it—not the boys less, but the girls more.

As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.

The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.

The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.

The present alone is true and actual; it is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively.

In old age it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life is over and done with.

Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

The very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have brought thee tranquillity.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.

There are but two directions in this life in which you can grow; backward or forward.

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration.

In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel.

My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.

The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations.

Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like.

Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.