Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. — The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Words are both better and worse than thoughts, they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin.

Apothegms are the wisdom of the past condensed for the instruction and guidance of the present.

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it.

What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we lost.