By trials God is shaping us for higher things.

Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend.

The labor and sweat of our brows are so far from being a curse, that without it, our very bead would not be so great a blessing—If it were not for labor, men could neither eat so much, nor relish be pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful, so useful, so strong, so patient, so noble, not so untempted.

Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body or the root to the tree.

A brother does not always make a friend.

The private and personal blessings we enjoy—the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty and integrity—deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.

Every degree of recession from the state of grace Christ first put us in is a recession from our hopes.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.

Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment: for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could.

On him that takes revenge, revenge shall be taken, and by a real evil he shall dearly pay for the goods that are but airy and fantastical; it is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.