Wit is often a mask. If you tear it you will find either genius irritated or cleverness juggling.

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, 'Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.' For to the fruit giving is a need as receiving is a need to the root.

There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin's spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future.

if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing

A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open and secret, which we can understand only by love, and touch only by virtue.