Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/410

402 Beware of that which becomes the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of evil and closing the eye to goodness, till at last men arrive at the state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and that is hell. —.

There is no cure for ossification of the heart. Oh, that miserable state, when to the jaundiced eye all good transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health become the poison of disease. —.

Man is the crowning of history and the realization of poetry, the free and living bond which unites all nature to that God who created it for Himself. —.

Let us not undervalue the dignity of human nature. Man, although fallen, still retains some traces of his primeval glory and excellence—broken columns of a celestial temple, magnificent, even in its ruins. —.

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The older I grow—and I now stand upon the brink of eternity—the more comes back to me that sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes, "What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever." —.