The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.

Evil that used to be localized and covered like a boil is now legalized and paraded like a banner. The most fundamental roots and bulwarks of civilization are questioned or attacked. Nations disavow their religious heritage. Marriage and family responsibilities are discarded as impediments to personal indulgence. The movies and magazines and television that shape our attitudes are filled with stories or images that portray the children of God as predatory beasts or, at best, as trivial creations pursuing little more than personal pleasure. And too many of us accept this as entertainment.

The men and women who made epic sacrifices to combat evil regimes in the past were shaped by values that are disappearing from our public teaching. The good, the true, and the beautiful are being replaced by the no-good, the "whatever," and the valueless fodder of personal whim.

Sunday, July 13th, 1777. News that our Army has surprised Washington and taken him prisoner. Afraid it is too good to be authentic. His great caution will always prevent him being made a prisoner to our inactive General. Washington is certainly a most surprising man, one of Nature's geniuses, a Heaven-born General, if there is any of that sort. That a Negro-driver should, with a ragged Banditti of undisciplined people, the scum and refuse of all nations on earth, so long keep a British General at bay, nay, even, oblige him, with as fine an army of Veteran Soldiers as ever England had on the American Continent, to retreat--it is astonishing. It is too much. By Heavens, there must be double-dealing somewhere. General Howe, a man brought up to War from his youth, to be puzzled and plagued for two years together, with a Virginia Tobacco planter. O! Britain, how thy Laurels tarnish in the hands of such a Lubber! The life of General Washington will be a most copious subject for some able Biographer to exercise his pen upon. Nature did not make me one of the Biographic order. However, I will make some remarks concerning this great and wonderful man.

(Cresswell was a loyalist in America during the Revolutionary War.)

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

Why do people feel guilty about TV? What is wrong with it? Just this: it shuts out all the wonderful things of which the mind is capable, leaving it drugged in a state of thoughtless stupor.

"I would rather trust my child to a serpent than to a teacher who does not believe in God."

Your destiny is to be a wife and a mother in Zion, not a model and a streetwalker in Babylon. You should dress and act accordingly.

Let us here observe that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.

It is vain for persons to fancy to themselves that they are heirs with those ... who have offered their all in sacrifice ... unless they, in like manner, offer unto him the same sacrifice.