There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

Distrust your religion unless it is cheerful, unless it turns every act and deed to music and exults in attempts to catch the harmony of the new life.‎

Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings.

The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.

If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.

Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door the dark night wakes - the glory breaks, Christmas comes once more.