After speech, silence is the greatest power in the world.

In relations between the rich and the strong, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it's liberty that grinds down, and the law which liberates.

Whilst no people appears in history without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priesthood--that is to say, without a constituted religion--unbelief appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming established as the public and social expression of a nation.

Since God is the end of man, since he has created us to be perfect and happy in him, it is manifest that if the designs of creation have not here below been entirely frustrated, there should be found men who tend to their end in seeking and loving God. And nevertheless, because of human liberty, there should also be found other men who neglect God, their principle and their end, and yield to the seduction of created things. Such indeed is the spectacle which the history of the world unceasingly presents to us.

Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality.

The intercourse between man and God reposes upon truths of another order than that of reason, upon a light different and more elevated than that which naturally enlightens created intelligences.

Turn your eyes whither you will, enter into whatever temple you please, you will find there on the very threshold Prophecy and Sacrament .... whoever despises these two things, infallibly bends towards earth, knowing nothing of God but his name, and holding with him no other relations than ingratitude and forgetfulness.