The greater our dread of crosses, the more necessary they are for us.

I believe that we are conforming to the divine order and the will of Providence when we are doing even indifferent things that belong to our condition.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

How desirable is this simplicity! Who will give it to me? I will quit all else; it is the pearl of great price.

The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

The wind of God is always blowing... but you must hoist your sail.

The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls.