The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of
quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it
live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you
may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny
weather.--_Thoreau._
~Circumstances.~--Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but
the instruments of the wise.--_Samuel Lover._
What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the
impossible.--_Balzac._
~Civilization.~--Mankind's struggle upwards, in which millions are
trampled to death, that thousands may mount on their bodies.--_Mrs.
Balfour._
The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various
fortunes. First men were in chains which went back to an iron hand. Then
he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an
unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron and ruling by force. The last
was civilization, ruling by ideas.--_Wendell Phillips._
Nations, like individuals, live and die; but civilization cannot
die.--_Mazzini._
~Clergymen.~--The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have
always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he
is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands
than the cure of souls. I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy
life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.--_Johnson._
Clergymen consider this world only as a diligence in which they can
travel to another.--_Napoleon._