There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.

What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.

Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.