Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

Man is emphatically self-made.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from God.

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.

Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion.