[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?

Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.

Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.

There is no reality on this earth except religion and the power of love; all the rest is even more fugitive than life itself.