Only three things are necessary to make life happy: the blessing of God, books , and a friend.

Real excellence and humility are not incompatible one with the other, on the contrary they are twin sisters.

The great men of antiquity were poor.

It is religion which has made modern Europe what she is by its stability amid the ruin of nations, by adapting itself to circumstances, to times, and places, without ever abating an iota of its unshaken principles.

Happily, and thanks to God, there are orifices through which our inner life constantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath its pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost of these channels which lead the soul out of its invisible sanctuary; it is by speech that man communicates the secret converse which is his real life.

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.

It is not a slight thing, gentlemen, to force a man to say what he is, or what he believes himself to be; for that supreme word of man, that single expression which he utters of and upon himself is decisive. It lays down the basis upon which all judgment of him is to be formed. From that moment all the acts of his life must correspond to the answer given by him.