At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.

It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.

There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.