Regret.—A wrong act followed by just regret and thoughtful caution to avoid like errors, makes a man better than he would have been if he had never fallen.—Horatio Seymour.
The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, but he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow.—Dr. Johnson.
A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
—Longfellow.
The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,—in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.—Miss Mulock.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
—Whittier.
Religion.—A religion that never suffices to govern a man will never suffice to save him; that which does not sufficiently distinguish one from a wicked world will never distinguish him from a perishing world.—Howe.
Religion crowns the statesman and the man,
Sole source of public and of private peace.
—Young.
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.—Hosea Ballou.
The source of all good and of all comfort.—Burke.
You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will alone.—S.T. Coleridge.