Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?

We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments.... Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own.

Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.

Why should my love be powerless to help another?

Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.