Augustus Hare

Nothing good bursts forth all at once. The lightning may dart out of a black cloud; but the day sends his bright heralds before him, to prepare the world for his coming.

Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

The virtue of paganism was strength; the virtue of Christianity is obedience.

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.

There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings, - the clearest proof that it is out of its element.

Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent.

Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which God has manifested to us?

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action.

A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.