Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.

Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth.

To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

The world sees only the reflection of merit; therefore when you come to know a really great man intimately, you may as often find him above as below his reputation.