*Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen. Bulwer-Lytton.

*All reason is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts and principles previously known. This will show the very great importance of knowledge, especially that kind which is called experience. John Foster.

*Those who follow the banners of Reason are like the well-disciplined battalions which, wearing a more sober uniform and making a less dazzling show than the light troops commanded by Imagination, enjoy more safety, and even more humor, in the conflicts of human life. Sir Walter Scott.

*I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it. Goethe.

*Half the misery of human life might be extinguished, would men alleviate the general curse they live under, by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity. Addison.

*God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness. Beecher.

*How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light! Dewey.

*It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured. Colton.

*It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation his will. Feltham.

*Never can true reconcilement grow/Where wounds of deadly hate have pierc'd so deep. Milton.

*Oh, my dear friends, you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day, if you only could know and see and feel that the time is short, how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do! Phillips Brooks.

*Reconciliation, therefore, is not the consequence of paying a debt, or procuring atonement for an injury, but an organic process of the human life. John Weiss.

*O untraceable ministry! O unlooked-for blessing! that the wickedness of many should be hidden in one godly and righteous man, and the righteousness of one justify a host of sinners! Justin Martyr.

*For the bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation. Cervantes.

*Is it not an amazing thing, that men shall attempt to investigate the mystery of the redemption, when, at the same time that it is propounded to us as an article of faith solely, we are told that "the very angels have desired to pry into it in vain"? Sterne.

*To refine and polish is a part of our work in this world. J.T. Headley.

*Refinement is superior to beauty. Lascaris.

*Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement. Beecher.

*It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage. Dr. Johnson.

*Refinement is the delicate aroma of Christianity. Charlotte M. Yonge.

*That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect. Hosea Ballou.

*Refinement is just as much a Christian grace in a man as in a woman; but he is not such a hateful, unsexed creature without it as a woman is. Charlotte M. Yonge.

*True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself...than to itself. Greville.

*Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object. Hazlitt.

*Men are less ashamed as they are less polished. Warton.

*No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other. Colton.

*When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsakes me; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. Addison.

*Whatever you dislike in another person take care to correct in yourself. Sprat.

*Bad men excuse their faults; good men will leave them. Ben Jonson.

*He who reforms himself has done more toward reforming the public than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots. Lavater.

*Men and nations can only be reformed in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. Rousseau.

*He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing. Colton.

*Embrace in one act the two truths--thine own sin, and God's infinite mercy in Jesus Christ. Alexander Maclaren.

*It is folly to shiver over last year's snow. Whately.

*Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache? Richter.

*The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,--in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness. Miss Mulock.

*The business of life is to go forward... Dr. Johnson.

*Religion is not a dogma, nor an emotion, but a service. Roswell D. Hitchcock.

*Religion is the best armor in the world, but the worst cloak. Bunyan.

*A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life. Beecher.

*Religion without joy,--it is no religion. Theodore Parker.

*Religion is using everything for God. Beecher.

*Never trust anybody not of sound religion, for he that is false to God can never be true to man. Lord Burleigh.

*All true religion must stand on true morality. Beecher.

*Nothing but religion is capable of changing pains into pleasures. Stanislaus.

*The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions. Bacon.

*If we make religion our business, God will make it our blessedness. H.G.J. Adam.

*If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it? Franklin.

*There is nothing solid and substantial in this world but religious ideas. Royer-Collard.

*Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics. Wendell Phillips.

*What a solace Christianity must be to one who has an undoubted conviction of its truth! Napoleon I.

*We may as well tolerate all religions, since God Himself tolerates all. Fenelon.

*Be sure that religion cannot be right that man is the worse for having. William Penn.

*Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded. J. Petit-Senn.

*Place not thy amendment only in increasing thy devotion, but in bettering thy life. Thomas Fuller.

*Educate men without religion, and you make them but clever devils. Duke of Wellington.

*The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown/To saints whose lives are better than his own. Churchill.

*Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life. Beecher.

*The religious instinct will never be replaced by law or even philanthropy. High R. Haweis.

*Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion. Sir Arthur Helps.

*There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth. Bacon.

*Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. Colton.

*Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known. Pascal.

*A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion. J.G. Holland.

*Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart. Richard Cecil.

*The secret of a man's nature lies in his religion, in what he really believes about this world and his own place in it. Froude.

*Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and hard-heartedness of the professors of it. Matthew Henry.

*The flower of youth never appears more beautiful than when it bends towards the Sun of Righteousness. Matthew Henry.

*True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest. Addison.

*Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy end of life to themselves. Tillotson.

*It is the business of religion in these days to isolate herself from the world like John the Baptist. She must go down into the world like Jesus Christ. Hugh R. Haweis.

*Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty. Joubert.

*An everlasting lodestar, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night. Carlyle.

*Mystery, such as is given to God, is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it. Mme. de Stael.

*Religion is life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, friendship looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be in harmony. James Freeman Clarke.

*A man in whom religion is an inspiration, who has surrendered his being to its power, who drinks it, breathes it, bathes in it, cannot speak otherwise than religiously. J.G. Holland.

*The religion of Christ is peace and good-will,--the religion of Christendom is war and ill-will. Landor.

*All who have been great and good without Christianity, would have been much greater and better with it. Colton.

*Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission, its masterpiece, is to reunite them. Vinet.

*It is a great disgrace to religion, to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces. Walter Scott.

*Over all the movements of life religion scatters her favors, but reserves the choicest, her divine blessing, for the last hour. Logan.

*All belief which does not render more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, an erroneous and superstitious belief. Lavater.

*Religion is the mortar that binds society together; the granite pedestal of liberty; the strong backbone of the social system. Guthrie.

*The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you. Chalmers.

*There is something in religion when rightly comprehended that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are the constant hectic of a fool. Richard Cecil.

*Wonderful! that the Christian religion, which seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life, should also constitute the happiness of this. Montesquieu.