Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it; so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul.

This temporal fire is but a painted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in hell.

Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.

Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.

Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles.

When thou receivest praise, take it indifferently, and return it to God, the giver of the gift, or blesser of the action.

Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.