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

Faith is letting down our nets into the transparent deeps at the Divine command, not knowing what we shall draw.

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

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.

Violent excitement exhausts the mind and leaves it withered and sterile.

Resign every forbidden joy; restrain every wish that is not referred to God's will; banish all eager desires, all anxiety; desire only the will of God; seek him alone and supremely, and you will find peace.

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.