TRIED by final tests, and reduced to its essential elements, sin is the preference of self to God, and the assertion of the human will against the Will of God.

Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar.

IN the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, become flesh and instinct.

ONE of the main seats of our weakness lies in this very notion, that what we do at the moment cannot matter much;

GREAT occasions do not make heroes or cowards – they simply unveil them to the eyes of men.

All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists.   The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness.

Every reader of the Gospels has marked the sympathy of Jesus with children.   How He watched their games!  How angry He was with His disciples for belittling them!  How He used to warn men, whatever they did, never to hurt a little child!   How grateful were children’s praises when all others had turned against Him!   

But every action must have its reaction upon the nature of the one who puts it forth.   If it does not, it fails of that which is its highest result;

Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm, acute observation, divination of motives – all these things disappear when a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of Christ Jesus.