What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? That what has never been, should be, or that what has been, should be again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it.

If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

What matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he gets little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?

Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the night of God.