No human power can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades; it only makes hypocrites.

Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.

Listen less to your own thoughts and more to God's thoughts.

True piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive.

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

On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat, but one in which Jesus Christ fights for us. We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home.

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.