Great Throughts Treasury

"Every child should be taught to pay all his debts, and to fulfill all his contracts, exactly in manner, completely in value, punctually at the time. Everything he has borrowed, he should be obliged to return uninjured at the time specified, and everything belonging to others which he has lost, he should be required to replace."

"Moderate desires constitute a character fitted to acquire all the good which the world can yield. He who has this character is prepared, in whatever situation he is, therewith to be content; has learned the science of being happy; and possesses the alchemic stone which changes every metal into gold."

"It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety to behold the piety to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence - the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires - without marking them all the mighty hand of god, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works."

"The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts."

"Education ought everywhere to be religious education. Parents are bound to employ no instructors who will instruct their children religiously. To commit children to the care of irreligious persons is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves. "

"For what end shall we be connected with men, of whom this is the character and conduct? Is it, that we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution; soberly dishonored; speciously polluted; the outcasts of delicacy and virtue, and the loathing of God and man? "

"And eyes disclosed what eyes alone could tell."

"Necessity can sharpen the wits even of children."

"All the duties of religion are eminently solemn and venerable in the eyes of children. But none will so strongly prove the sincerity of the parent; none so powerfully awaken the reverence of the child; none so happily recommend the instruction he receives, as family devotions, particularly those in which petitions for the children occupy a distinguished place."

"The Bible is a window in this prison-world, through which we may look into eternity."

"The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind."

"The ever varying brilliancy and grandeur of the landscape, and the magnificence of the sky, sun, moon and stars, enter more extensively into the enjoyment of mankind than we, perhaps ever think, or can possibly apprehend, without frequent and extensive investigation. This beauty and splendor of the objects around us, it is ever to be remembered, is not necessary to their existence, nor to what we commonly intend by their usefulness. It is therefore to be regarded as a source of pleasure, gratuitously super-induced upon the general nature of the objects themselves, and in this light, a testimony of the divine goodness, peculiarly affecting."

"What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!"

"The institution of marriage keeps the moral world in being, and secures it from an untimely dissolution. Without it, natural affection and amiableness would not exist, domestic education would become extinct, industry and economy be unknown, and man would be left to the precarious existence of the savage. But for this institution, learning and refinement would expire, government sink into the gulf of anarchy; and religion, hunted from earth, would hasten back to her native heavens."