Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others

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.

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

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.

God considers not the action, but the spirit of the action.

O what their joy and their glory must be, Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see! crowns for the valiant, for weary ones rest: God shall be all, and in all ever blest. Truly Jerusalem name we that shore, vision of peace that brings hope evermore; wish and fulfillment shall severed be ne'er, nor the thing prayed for come short of the prayer.

In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.