Wilderness is a temporary condition through which we are passing to the Promised Land.

Ah! destructive Ignorance, what shall be done to chase thee out of the World!

Ah, children, be afraid of going prayerless to bed, lest the Devil be your bedfellow.

You may ... make a little recreation of poetry, in the midst of your painful studies. Nevertheless, I cannot but advise you. Withhold thy throat from thirst. Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. ... let not the Circean cup intoxicate you.

Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.

History is the story of events, with praise or blame.

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear this!

Ignorance is the Mother not of Devotion, but of Heresy.

You are young and have the world before you stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard bumps.

That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the Devil. For any to deny the being of a Devil must be from ignorance or profaneness worse than diabolical.

Chrysostom, I remember, mentions a twofold book of God: the book of the creatures, and the book of the scriptures. God, having taught us first of all by his works, did it afterwards, by his Words. We will now for a while read the former of these books 'twill help us in reading the latter. They will admirably assist one another.

Instead of exhorting you to augment your charity, I will rather utter an exhortation, or at least a supplication, that you may not abuse your charity by misapplying it.