The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

The best use one can make of his mind is to distrust it.

It is when God appears to have abandoned us that we must abandon ourselves most wholly to God.

It is only by fidelity in little things that the grace of true love to God can be sustained, and distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit. . . . No one can well believe that our piety is sincere, when our behavior is lax and irregular in its little details. What probability is there that we should not hesitate to make the greatest sacrifices, when we shrink from the smallest?

Crosses are of no use to us but inasmuch as we yield ourselves up to them and forget ourselves.

When you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see.