Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Reflection makes men cowards.

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.