“Who does more earnestly long for a change than he who is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them?”

If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

Rose! Thou art the sweetest flower that ever drank the amber shower: Even the Gods, who walk the sky, are amourous of thy scented sigh.

Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms.

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

A drowning man will clutch at a straw.

Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.

The times are never so bad but that a good man can make shift to live in them.

Lord, give me a sense of humor so that I may take some happiness from this life and share it with others.

It’s wrong to deprive someone else of a pleasure so that you can enjoy one yourself, but to deprive yourself of a pleasure so that you can add to someone else’s enjoyment is an act of humanity by which you always gain more than you lose.

Lawyers-a profession it is to disguise matters.

For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.

The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.

And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.

Two evils, greed and faction are the destruction of all justice.

The things we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labor for.

A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.

The soul exceeds its circumstances.

To lose a son under those circumstances – a violent death like my son went through, it just puts a burden on your heart.

That is the physics that all fearless types discover at some point – an appropriate ratcheting up of self-belief and energy when facing negative or even impossible circumstances.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.

God’s plans for your life far exceed the circumstances of your day.