Great Throughts Treasury

"Preserve your conscience always soft and sensitive. If but one sin force its way into that tender part of the soul and dwell thee, the road is paved for a thousand iniquities."

"Do not be deceived; happiness and enjoyment do not lie in wicked ways."

"Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination."

"Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world."

"A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul."

"Reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation that must form our judgment."

"The mind's the standard of the man."

"The calmest and serenest hours of life, when the passions of nature are all silent, and the mind enjoys its most perfect composure."

"Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks, love, and the contemplation of the Deity."

"If you only make your addresses to God in the morning and evening, and forget him all the day, your hearts will grow indifferent in worship."

"Kind words toward those you daily meet, kind words and actions right, will make this life of our most sweet, turn darkness into light."

"Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence."

"Joy to the world! the Lord is come;Let earth receive her King. Let ev'ry heart prepare Him room,And heav'n and nature sing,"

"Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your own profession. Do not indulge yourselves to judge of things by the first glimpse, or a short and superficial view of them; for this will fill the mind with errors and prejudices, and give it a wrong turn and ill habit of thinking, and make much work for retraction."