No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.--_Channing._ Contentment comes neither by culture nor by wishing; it is reconciliation with our lot, growing out of an inward superiority to our surroundings.--_Rev. J. K. McLean._ At times it is only necessary to rest one’s self in silence for a few minutes, in order to take off the pressure and become wonderfully refreshed.--_Dresser._ Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point.--_Drummond._ It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.--_Ruskin._ For life, with all its yields of joy and woe And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend,-- Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love; How love might be, hath been indeed, and is; And that we hold henceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world, And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all. --_Robert Browning._ Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.--_Phillips Brooks._ What does your anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow, brother, of its sorrow; but ah! it empties to-day of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.--_Ian MacLaren._ If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch, you will make misery for yourself out of everything which God sends you: you will be as wretched as you choose.--_Charles Kingsley._ But on God’s dial-plate of time, ’Tis never late to him who stands Self-centred in a trust sublime, With mastered force and thinking hands. --_Minot J. Savage._ “Look for the light that the shadow proves.” Oh, the little birds sang East, and the little birds sang West, And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness, Round our restlessness, His rest.--_E. B. Browning._ Be thrifty, but not covetous: therefore give Thy need, thine honor, and thy friend his due. Never was scraper brave man. Get to live; Then live, and use it: else it is not true That thou hast gotten. Surely use alone Makes money not a contemptible stone. --_George Herbert._