If you would rise, shun luxury, for luxury lowers and degrades.

Prayer is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness.

Memory of our good works makes us negligent and leads to arrogance. Do not think of your good deeds, so that God may remember them.

Depart from the highway, and transplant thyself in some enclosed ground; for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep her fruit till it be ripe.

Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself, substitutes the strangest absurdities for the highest divine concepts

Intemperance is a hydra with a hundred heads. She never stalks abroad unaccompanied with impurity, anger, and the most infamous profligacies.

Do not the angels differs from us in this respect, that they do not want so many things as we do? Therefore the less we need, the more we are on our way to them; the more we need, the more we sink down to this perishable life.