15 quotes
Wisdom and truth, the offspring of the sky, are immortal; while cunning and deception, the meteors of the earth, after glittering for a moment, must pass away.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
We should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us than that they should be speedily removed from us.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
His imperial fancy has laid all Nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art.
He [Kippis] might be a very clever man by nature for aught I know, but he laid so many books upon his head that his brains could not move.
What other book besides the Bible could be heard in public assemblies from year to year, with an attention that never tires, and an interest that never cloys?
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Call things by their right names... Glass of brandy and water! That is the current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.
The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Eternity invests every state, whether of bliss or of suffering, with a mysterious and awful importance, entirely its own. It gives that weight and moment to whatever it attaches, compared to which all interests that know a period fade into absolute insignificance.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
If ever Christianity appears in its power, it is when it erects its trophies upon the tomb; when it takes up its votaries where the world leaves them; and fills the breast with immortal hope in dying moments.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Pride is the growth of blindness and darkness; humility, the product of light and knowledge; and while the former has its origin in a mistaken and delusive estimate of things, the latter is as much the offspring of truth, as it is the parent of virtue.
While the passion of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone influence our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which conscience approves, which Heaven inspires, — that of being and doing good.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Faith is a practical habit, which, like every other, is strengthened and increased by continual exercise. It is nourished by meditation, by prayer, and the devout perusal of the Scriptures; and the light which it diffuses becomes stronger and clearer by an uninterrupted converse with its object, and a faithful compliance with its dictates.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection; that, leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and with earth: its first object is to dethrone God, its next to destroy man.