The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests.

How can we feel our need of His help, or our dependence on Him, or our debt to Him, or the nature of His gift to us, unless we know ourselves.... This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church.... They have never had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 It is our great relief that God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, that he looks at the motives, and accepts and blesses in spite of incidental errors.

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

Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes. One alone is true to us; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our need.

Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.

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.