Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium

Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident.

Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.

When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.

Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is.

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart, in its cunning, quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamor within.