Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!

Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.