Losses are comparative; imagination only makes them of any moment.

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?