Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.
One of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: do your work well and then be ready to depart when God shall call.
Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.
Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.
Seek happiness for its own sake, and you will not find it; seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with the sunshine.
Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we lost.
Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.
He that never changes his opinion never corrects mistakes and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others.
High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.
Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!
Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both.
We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.
Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better.
Most controversies would soon be ended, if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions.
Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws - a thing which can never be demonstrated.
