Ah, why should we wear black for the guests of God?

--Ruskin.

The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men. -George Eliot.

Silk comes from a worm, gold from rock, the lotus from mud. . . . He who has superior qualities becomes distinguished through their development and expression. What signifies noble birth? -Hindu.

It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place, as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.

-Ruskin.

I would say to all: use your gentlest voice at home. Watch it day by day as a pearl of great price; for it will be worth more to you in days to come than the best pearl hid in the sea. A kind voice is joy, like a lark's song, to a hearth at home. Train it to sweet tones now and it will keep in tune through life.

-Elihu Burritt.

"Make of your grief a pedestal on which to stand."

And for the things I see

I trust the things to be.

- Whittier.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit. -Epictetus.

Receive your thoughts as guests, but treat your desires as children.

-Chinese.

The profit of a book is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

-Emerson.

The cry of the age is more for fraternity than for charity. If one exists the other will follow, or better still, will not be needed. --Henry D. Chapin.

I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

-Thoreau.

There is only one real failure possible; and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.

-Canon Farrar.

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet. -Hegel.

When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. -Emerson.

The truest self-respect is not to think of self.

Our doubts are traitors,

-Henry Ward Beecher.

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

-Shakespeare.

Do not talk about the lantern that holds the lamp; but make haste, uncover the light, and let it shine. -George Macdonald.

LIGHT.

All love thee, but none can express thee,
Or pierce to the core of thy heart;
The poet in dreams may half guess thee,
And faintly divine what thou art:

But the song that would sing thee is broken,
The lips quiver once and are still,
And thy mystery, ever unspoken,
Is left for the future to fill.

-Anne Sheldon Coombs.

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

-Horace Mann.

Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.

-Coleridge.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

What an antiseptic is a pure life!

-Holmes.

-Lowell.

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Charles Dickens.

When the sun rises, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying,-"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty."

-William Blake.

The greatest thing a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of his other children. -Henry Drummond.