No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

The happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to him.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up.

There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.

I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.

I could well believe that it is God's intention, since we have refused milder remedies, to compel [Christians] into unity, by persecution even. Satan is without doubt nothing else than a hammer in the hand of a benevolent and severe God.