If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling. ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.

It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.

Experience proves that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist.

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.

Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.