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

Like every man who appears at an epoch which is historical and rendered famous by his works, Jesus Christ has a history, a history which the church and the world possess, and which, surrounded by countless memorials, has at least the same authenticity as any other history formed in the same countries, amidst the same peoples and in the same times. As, then, if I would study the lives of Brutus and Cassius, I should calmly open Plutarch, I open the Gospel to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the same composure.

The Church had the words reason and liberty on her lips when the inalienable rights of the human race were threatened with shipwreck.

The great men of antiquity were poor.

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.

Youth is life's beautiful moment.

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