Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin).

But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.

These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.

It's all God's will: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.

Kings are the slaves of history.

The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him.