An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.