Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer.

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

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading I would spurn them all.

Nothing marks so much the solid advancement of a soul, as the view of one's wretchedness without anxiety and without discouragement.

There were some who said that a man at the point of death was more free than all others, because death breaks every bond, and over the dead the united world has no power.

I had often heard Mentor say, that the voluptuous were never brave, and I now found by experience that it was true; for the Cyprians whose jollity had been so extravagant and tumultuous, now sunk under a sense of their danger and wept like women. I heard nothing but the screams of terror and the wailings of hopeless distress. Some lamented the loss of pleasures that were never to return; but none had presence of mind either to undertake or direct the navigation of the menaced vessel.

You really don't even own the present moment, for even this belongs to God.