Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year. These make a merry christmas!

Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk the hoar plum of the golden-rod.

Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play!

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all.

If thou of fortune be bereft, and in thy store there be but left two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Green calm below, blue quietness above.

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.

Colonel Henry Blake, a surgeon: "I can paint a barn with someone else's blood. I just can't stand to see my own.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

I am not a huge follower of music and tend to like one CD and play it to death, usually when I am washing up.

Cast first to your church those visions you absolutely know are the Lord's.

We fought for freedom together. We had no government, no weapons to help us. We defeated such a big empire without any government, without any arms.

The people who influence us are those who have stood unconsciously for the right thing. They are like the stars and the lilies, and the joy of God flows through them all the time.

Demand more of yourself.

I cannot persuade myself that without love to others, and without, as far as rests with me, peaceableness toward all, I can be called a worthy servant of Jesus Christ.

You don't have to be an elected official to be a public servant.