Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience.

Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.

The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful but whether it is true. When we wish to go to a place, we do not ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but whether it is the right road.

Man is a mixed being, made up of a spiritual soul and of a fleshly body; the angels are pure spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created and finite in all respects, free from decay, free from the power of death, whereas God is infinite and uncreated.