I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.

Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.

Results are nothing; the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.

However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a pre-eminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.

Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.