The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

We cannot be held to what is beyond our strength and means; for at times the accomplishment and execution may not be in our power, and indeed there is nothing really in our own power except the will: on this are necessarily based and founded all the principles that regulate the duty of man.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.