To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty.
Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high human office,--a sacrament when its aim is grand, when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practised for freedom or for love or devotion.
The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.
The laws of light and of heat translate each other;-so do the laws of sound and colour; and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.
A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.
Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.