The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.

What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.

There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.

To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.