Eternal law has arranged nothing better than this, that it has given us one way in to life, but many ways out.

To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.

If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh.

The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.

As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious virtue, so also it is an obvious, a cheap, and an easy one; so obvious that wherever there is life there is a place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense, and so easy that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.