The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves - our weaknesses, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.

Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries.

Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path.

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.

Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning.

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.