There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

Man will rise, if God by exception lends him a hand; he will rise by abandoning and renouncing his own means, and letting himselfbe raised and uplifted by purely celestial means.

People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.

As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.