Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste... if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.

The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.