The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.

Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affliction or grief has humanized the soul.

However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do.

No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.

The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive-berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased; an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.

Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.

Marriage is not a union merely between two creatures - it is a union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both.