Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.

I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.

How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts when we are surprised to find our prayers answered.

Curiosity is little more than another name for Hope.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.