Beautiful thoughts hardly bring us to God until they are acted upon. No one can have a true idea of right until he does it.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

Even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is inhabitable.

Nature takes away any faculty that is not used.

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.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.