Reader's Digest

“ When we look around us, what do we behold? We see the most unmistakable tokens of prosperity, peace, and plenty; the self-evident fruits of high heaven's protecting care, industry, sobriety, and faith. ”

“ Those perpetual cares in which you have passed your days, those trifling cares and thoughts for every-day necessities, which are so opposite to your own nature, are they then so pleasant, so captivating? ”

“ The Lord is powerfully carrying on his work. Sinners are alarmed, and saints edified. This day in visiting the sick, my soul was greatly comforted, by hearing of God’s dealings with their souls.
“On Monday I begin to change the tickets. God give me integrity, wisdom, meekness, and love. ”

“ With hearts full of gratitude for your past service, with the earnest and intense interest for your future welfare and prosperity, we all unite in wishing that the evening of your days may be spent in that calm tranquility and repose of which you were deprived in your earlier life. ”

“ They will find the strongest reasoning, the most moving expostulations, and warm and pressing exhortations, mixed with seasonable cautions and reproofs, which are all admirably fitted to impress the mind with suitable sentiments and affections. ”

“ Just after something has befallen us which, for good or ill, will make a great change in our lives, what a totally new aspect the common everyday things about us are apt to wear—the book we were reading, the letter we had begun, the picture we knew—what a new and tender attraction they may have for us, or what a grim and terrible irony! ”

“ The public scenes opened gradually, and went on increasing in importance; the men grew in number, the personages in dignity, their appurtenances, as well as themselves, in splendour,—and thus it advanced with every day, till at last even a well-prepared and firm eye became bewildered. ”

“ Remember, O nation of great profession! how the Lord has waited upon thee since the dawning reformation, and the many mercies and judgments by which he has pleaded with thee; and awake and arise out of thy deep sleep, and yet hear his word in thy heart, that thou mayst live. ”

“ The English newspaper reader who has once heard the word 'sensational,' may try to submit every morning the innermost sanctuary of his consciousness to the trained psychologists of the halfpenny journals. ”

“ Who shall decide for me—if not myself—on their claims?—who can judge for me what strength requires to be exercised, what pleasure to be enjoyed, what growth to be forwarded? All around me, everywhere, are the means of gratification,—I have but to reach forth my hand and grasp ”

“ Then his thoughts turned upon all those men who had attained to his years, who had been young when he was young, and who now, in different parts of the world, were spending, in peace and tranquillity, this first night of the year, as good fathers of families and friends of truth and virtue. ”

“ That health and prosperity may be yours, and that the evening of your days may be as free from a cloud as your past life has been unspotted, is the sincere desire of the corps in whose behalf we have the honor to subscribe ourselves. ”

“ Now, in the earliest days of your wedded life, before other cares engross your time and thoughts, you have the opportunity to make home a word of sacred meaning, to learn its true nature yourself, and to gather around it associations that shall be lasting, and a safeguard through life. ”

“ What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and revelation? ”

“ I will stake the divine truth of this evening’s Scriptures, and of their historical and imaginative illustrations, on the feelings, if you know how to observe, detect, characterise, and confess them,—the feelings, I say, that will rise in your heart to-morrow morning when you read what is good news to other men, even to good men, and to the families and family interests of good men. ”

“ My last prayer and advice to you is that, as good poets and painstaking actors always do, so you should be most attentive in the last scenes and conclusion of your function and business, so that this third year of your government, like a third act in a play, may appear to have been the most elaborated and most highly finished. ”

“ We are rejoiced to see a work published in our country, on a topic in physiology which the ‘artificial modesty’ to which we have formerly alluded, has covered up, until a solitary, but fatal vice is spreading desolation through our schools and families, unnoticed or unknown. ”

“ The observation of the reader will doubtless furnish instances of persons whose forebodings of calamity—sometimes confirmed by the event, but oftener otherwise—are recognized by their business partners and friends, and call for the exercise of patience and the use of every means to dissipate the mysterious, unwelcome, and paralyzing impression. ”

“ When shall my soul be refreshed, with hearing that the work of the Lord prospers in his hand? I suppose before now you have received my letters, and seen my journal, and I believe God is yet preparing great things for us. ”

“ There may even remain, in the memory of a more exacting age to come, a pleasant recollection of those who upheld, in time of tranquillity, a standard of manners and a tradition of kindliness, duty, and courage before life’s lesser ills. ”

“ Bad habits should be watched and corrected, and graceful ones, cleanliness and neatness of person, be stimulated. Blair’s Governess’s Register of Study and Conduct, will prove an excellent auxiliary. Superstitions, and vulgar faith in dreams, signs, omens, fortune-telling, and other weaknesses of mind, should be constantly exposed. ”

“ Every once in a while I had read in the newspapers the story of some fellow who had eluded his fate, deserved or otherwise, years before and had lived and builded anew and in a fashion to win the applause of all men. ”

“ They must, I fancy, be amazed themselves at the manner in which they are treated—the abundance of food, the entire absence of rancour on our part, and the general conditions under which they work and live. ”

“ I heartily wish you, in the plain, home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind and your manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends! ”

“ When the ladies of the city hear that thou art to be present, they also will attend, and so wilt thou bring healing to her spirit, for now she is broken-hearted and has none to look to but God the Most High.” Then she wept and kissed my feet, repeating the following verses:
Thy presence honoureth us, and we Confess thy magnanimity:
If thou forsake us, there is none Can stand to us in stead of thee. ”

“ Which of us that be worldly, heedless, unprofitable, shall endure His withering scrutiny, when He shall be revealed from heaven with fire?—or in the sunshine of His final acceptance, remember our toil and labour? ”

“ If God worked miracles nowadays, and was to make a dozen or so honest men with a good, stout share of brains, there might be a little lifting-up of the dull skies. Take this town, leaving out politics and all that sort. ”

“ Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, and of the change for the better that would come over my character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear home-wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. ”

“ Let us begin this new year by an honest dealing with ourselves, asking ourselves this question, 'What am I living for?' And if the answer, first of all, be, as, of course, it will be, the accomplishment of the nearer and necessary aims, such as the conduct of our business, the cultivating of our understandings, the love and peace of our homes, then let us press the investigation a little further, and say, What then? ”

“ Here have I health, a loving family—have had the inestimable advantages of education, and even now, in the imminent approach of danger, am enabled to preserve, in some measure, a composure of feeling, a resolution—which will support me, and those who are dearer to me than life. ”

“ It is so true to nature that it reads like a transcript from an actual journal. It is full of good-humor, quiet fun, gentle pathos, and good sound sense. One follows with surprising interest the daily doings, the pleasures and trials of the good family whose life is pictured in its pages. ”

“ The deference, the delicate attentions, the gentleness, the refinement of behavior, in word and act, which you inspire, are both the means and the evidence of the highest cultivation. In public and in private life, in assemblies, public conveyances, at table, around the evening lamp, in all the intercourse of the family, the susceptibility of impression, the restraints and the chastised utterances, in word and action, of husbands, fathers, brothers and friends, which are due to the presence of woman, are a correct gauge of civilization and refinement. ”

“ You, and such as you, are deserving the regard of the greatest of men. What sisters, what wives, what mothers and what neighbours would you make!—Such a sight as those ladies afforded at that time, and on that occasion, was worthy, and doubtless received the attention of angels. ”

“ Speech and silence, wisdom and folly, truth and falsehood, friendship and enmity, wealth and poverty, industry and idleness, youth and age, moderation and excess, are all pressed into the service; even the divers occupations of life have their varying lessons, and to these we now give attention. ”

“ Yet in hundreds of fœtid and pestilential dens a thousand and one articles of every-day use for the personal comfort or gratification of every section of the community and for every period of life are made. ”

“ Throughout these tales the plan has been to present a picture of ordinary life, with its small daily events, its pleasures, and its trials, so as to draw out its capabilities of being turned to the best account. ”

“ None who have partaken the hospitalities of that delightful retreat, will forget its rare combinations of age and wisdom still retaining the vivacity of youth, high intellect without pride, and the sweet developments of the most sacred affections. ”

“ How the times change and manners multiply! But throughout the centuries—on the lengthening road of which we shall plant another milestone presently with feasting and merry-making—good manners and bad have ever gone hand in hand. ”

“ We are here between six and seven hundred, of all ages and of all ranks, taken from our homes, and from all that usually makes the comfort of life, and crowded together under many of the inflictions that constitute its misery ”

“ Great delicacy in the development of character, and a subtle power of self-analysis are conspicuous in ‘A Life for a Life,‘ while the purity of its religious views, and the elevation--the grandeur, indeed--of its dominating sentiments, render its influences in every sense healthy and invigorating."--The Press. ”

“ The long winter nights, she explains in her letters, have made the people sluggish. Their want of interest in politics, literature, and scientific pursuits, have concentrated their attention upon the pleasures of the senses. ”

“ But whether on week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old age, there are moments, rare though they be, yet for all that the most critical moments of our life, when the old simple questions of humanity return to us in all their intensity, and we ask ourselves, What are we? ”

“ We remember before thee the daily works wherein we are engaged, the perplexities of our business, abroad or at home, and we pray that we may have such strength of faithfulness to thee that the dark shall appear light to us, and the crooked shall become straight, and the way of duty so plain before our face that we cannot err therein. ”

“ That peculiar gentleness of disposition, which is their general characteristic, immediately manifested itself in all their looks and actions, and gave full employment to those who made the human heart their study. ”

“ Let us, then, come to our feasts owning this, and giving ourselves up to his guidance. At first it will be hard work; our will and spirits will be like a lump of ice in a man’s hand, which yields but slowly to the warm pressure. ”

“ Observation and experience teach us, those scorning to swerve from a direct line of duty, or vainly to stoop to personal aggrandizement at the sacrifice of conscience, and make popularity paramount to Truth, are traduced by many whom that line of duty touches. ”