How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul, when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections? Be silent and God will speak again.

When kings interfere in matters of religion, they enslave instead of protecting it.

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.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety.

Above all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.