I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.

To restore man, who had been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small. This He did not by putting aside His greatness but by taking to Himself our littleness.

It [covetousness] is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.

The knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art.

Pray thee, spare, thyself at times: for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressure of his attention to work.

All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said has its origin in the Spirit.

It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.