I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it.

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect.

Alone thou goest forth, O Lord, in sacrifice to die; is this thy sorrow naught to us who pass unheeding by? Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord; make us thy sorrow feel, till through our pity and our shame love answers love's appeal. This is earth's darkest hour, but thou dost light and life restore; then let all praise be given thee who livest evermore. Grant us with thee to suffer pain that, as we share this hour, thy cross may bring us to thy joy and resurrection power.

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention.

The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.

By doubting we are led to enquire, and by enquiry we perceive the truth.