Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is alwways the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded. That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Every man...should periodically be compelled to listen to opinions which are infuriating to him. To hear nothing but what is pleasing to one is to make a pillow of the mind.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn.

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather That stands upon the swell at full of tide, And neither way inclines.

Everywhere children are schooled to become masters at answering questions and to remain novices at asking them.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable - he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.

The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf A sheperd boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, Wolf! Wolf! and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: Pray, do come and help me, the Wolf is killing the sheep, but no one paid any heed to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no cause of fear, at his leisure lacerated or destroyed the whole flock. There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.

The key to faith is what we are willing to sacrifice to obtain it.

Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving.

Qui scribit bis legit He who writes reads twice