In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!

Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.