The Golden Gems of Life; Or, Gathered Jewels for the Home Circle

True kindness cherishes and actively promotes all reasonable instrumentalities for doing practical good in its own time, and, looking into futurity, sees the same spirit working...

Concerning the one you call your friend, tell us, will he weep with you in your hours of distress? Will he faithfully reprove you to your face for actions for which others are r...

The most unsuccessful men are usually the ones who think they could do great things if they only had the opportunity. But something has always prevented them. Providence has hed...

One danger of home life springs from its familiarity. Kindred hearts at a common fireside are far too apt to relax from the proprieties of social life. Careless language and car...

Despondency too long continued gives place to despair. No calamity can produce such a paralysis of the mind. It is the capstone of the climax of human misery. The mental powers...

Home has voices of experience and hearts of genuine holy love, to instruct you in the way of life, and to save you from a sense of loneliness as you gradually discover the selfi...

Let us be tender to our friends while they are with us,—not wait till they are gone to find out their good qualities. Let us be kind and gentle now, and not wait for regret to t...

The great secret is to learn to bear with each other's failings; not to be blind to them—that were either an impossibility or a folly. We must see and feel them; if we do neithe...

The gleeful laugh of happy children is the best home music, and the graceful figures of childhood are the best statuary. They are well-springs of pleasure, messengers of peace a...

There are so many humiliations in this world! The secret is to rise above them, to throw off dissatisfaction, and to grasp some pleasing hope, grateful and beneficial to the min...

Nothing better recommends an individual than his attentions to his parents. There are some children whose highest ambition seems to be the promotion of their parents' interest....

When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the high purpose of being a true woman, and make every circumstance bend to her will for the accomplishment of th...

Let one of our loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave can not hide the white face of the one...

True religion hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart, is simple, free, and attractive. It enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and i...

It has been well remarked that whoever imagines legitimate manners can be taken up and laid aside, put on and off, for the moment, has missed their deepest law. A noble and attr...

Do not cultivate curiosity; every man has in his own life follies enough, in his own mind troubles enough, in the performance of his own duties difficulties enough, without bein...

This work of mental training, apparently so vast, is really so pleasant and easy that it sweetens every day's life. There is no excuse for the youth who is content to grow up to...

Sorrow is the noblest of all discipline. Our nature shrinks from it, but it is not the less a discipline. It is a scourge, but there is healing in its stripes. It is a chalice,...

A young man is, in the true sense of the word, the architect of his own fortune. Rely upon your own strength of body and soul. Remember that the man who wills it can go almost a...

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart. Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness and wretchedness, and looks forwa...

The marriage ceremony is one of the most interesting and solemn spectacles that social life presents. To see two rational creatures, in the glow of youth and hope which invests...

Go to the men of business, of worth, of influence, and ask them who shall have their confidence and support. They will tell you "the men who falter not by the wayside, who toil...

Man is strong, but his strength is not adamant. He delights in enterprise and action; but to sustain him he needs a tranquil mind and a whole heart. He expends his moral force i...

Sorrows gather around Great Souls—Sorrows make the Mind Genial—Life abounds in Sorrowful Scenes—Sorrow the Noblest of Discipline—Christianity a Religion of Sorrow—Suffering must...

As manhood dawns and the young man catches its first lights, the pinnacles of realized dreams, the golden domes of high possibilities, and the purpling hills of great delights,...

The love of beauty and refinement belongs to every true woman. She ought to desire in moderation pretty dresses, and delight in beautiful colors and graceful fabrics. She ought...

Government is at the bottom of all progress. The state or nation that has the best government progresses most; so the individual who governs best himself makes the most rapid pr...

Life will inevitably take much of its shape and coloring from the plastic powers that operate in youth. Much will depend on taking a proper course at the outset of life. The pri...

There is one quality of mind which of all others is most likely to make our fortunes if combined with talents, or to ruin them without it. We allude to that quality of the mind...

It has been written that "he who toys with time trifles with a frozen serpent, which afterwards turns upon the hand which indulged the sport, and inflicts a deadly wound." There...

It were not possible for one to adopt a more suicidal course as far as his own happiness is concerned. The relish of his life is inverted, and the objects which administer the h...

How great a beauty and blessing it is to hold the royal gifts of the soul, so that they shall be music to some and fragrance to others, and life to all! It would be a most worth...

All species of intemperance grow of a want of self-control. To be a temperance man a man must master himself, must be a brave, noble conqueror of every enemy within his own boso...

The vice of selfishness displays itself in many ways. In an extreme form it is termed avarice, and shows itself in an insatiable desire to gather wealth. As heat changes the hit...

Honor and virtue are not the same, though true honor is always founded on virtue. Honor may take her tones and texture from the prevailing manners and customs of those around us...

Intellectual training is to be prized, but practical knowledge is necessary to make it available. Experience gained from books, however valuable, is of the nature of learning; e...

You may judge a man more truly by the books and papers that he reads than by the company which he keeps, for his associates are in a measure imposed upon him; but his reading is...

The design of this work is to rouse to honorable effort those who are wasting their time and energies through indifference to life's prizes. In the furtherance of this aim the a...

Surely, there is tenable ground for this hope! It can not be that earth is man's only abiding place. It can not be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to...