In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

Now what is it that moves our very hearts and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes?.. They have done us no harm and they have no power of resistance... There is something so very dreadful, so Satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

Prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of the body.

The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.

When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.