It is a part of Christianity to convert every natural talent to a holy use.
Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.
Troubles rather fix, than unsettle the Christian just as tempests only serve to root the oak faster, while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.
A faint endeavor ends in a sure defeat.
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation may produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by the very excess of that oil, whose property is to feed it.
My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. My object is to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.
The artful insult, whose envenomed dart scarcely wounds the hearing while it stabs the heart.
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. There is an eloquence in silence.
Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts, half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own. Nor do His infinite perfections fill our hearts half as much as our smallest wants.
Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom.
People talk as if the act of death made a complete change in the nature, as well as in the condition of man. Death is the vehicle to another state of being, but it possesses no power to qualify us for that state. In conveying us to a new world death does not give us a new heart.
