…sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life;  it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the blessedness, and only proper life of man.

And if by merely cultivating our own power of appreciation, by letting our light shine before men, we can do something to show the way upwards to those who have not yet seen it, still more potent is the influence of those who can actually create new delights and new interests in any branch of art or knowledge.

Happiness is the result of our own energy and cannot be poured upon the soul, and is almost independent of circumstances:  it is made by us, not for us.

Every one confesses that the more we can feel with all that is human, the better and fresher we are, the more capable of fine enjoyment, the more delightful and useful to the world…..   But very few make it, as Christ did, the business of their lives. 

He is tenderest, not who has sinned, as is sometimes vainly thought, – but who has known best the power of sin, by overcoming it.

 Length without breadth is hard and narrow.   Breadth without length – sympathy with others in a man who has no intense and clear direction for himself- is soft and weak.