The elements of character

In the first stages of regenerating life we think we love the Lord, although we know that we do not love our fellow-beings as we ought; and we cannot comprehend the truth, that...

Man, resting in thought or feeling, is at best a useless abstraction; he becomes truly a man only when his thoughts and feelings come forth into life, and impress themselves on...

If we learn to discriminate principles wisely, our next step is to apply a similar action of the thoughts to persons; and here again it is to the laws of absolute good and evil...

The passionate man perceives that his ungoverned temper causes him trouble, and occasions him to commit acts of injustice, and to say things for which he is afterwards ashamed;...

Undigested learning is as useless and oppressive as undigested food; and as in the dyspeptic patient the appetite for food often grows with the inability to digest it, so in the...

"An exclusively intellectual education leads, by a very obvious process, to hard-heartedness and the contempt of all moral influences. An exclusively moral education tends to fa...

True religious life consists in doing the will of God every moment of our lives. His will must bear upon us everywhere and at all times. Where the mind is absorbed in some one o...

If such motives are allowed to have sway, a person soon becomes confirmed in the habit of gossiping,--a habit that degrades alike the intellect and the heart. The soul of gossip...

Politeness, where it is loved and cultivated with simplicity for its own sake, gives a repose and ease of action to the moral being which may be compared to the comfort and sati...

There is one specious gift which is almost sure to mislead those who are largely endowed with it, and that is fluency. We listen with pain to one who speaks hesitatingly and wit...

When we contemplate these three classes of human beings, we perceive that only one of them can be said to lead successful lives. Two classes, and both of them painfully numerous...

In cultivating the powers of the mind, the first step is to admit distinctly to one's self the fact of human responsibility; to feel that we are stewards to whom the Lord has in...

We sometimes see persons discontented and peevish because they are old,--because they feel that they must soon pass away from the earth. Could this be, if they believed that lif...

A child may be educated at the best schools without acquiring any taste for good literature. The way a parent treats a child in relation to its books has far more influence in t...