"The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them by a single sentence, consisting of two or three words."

"[I]f there be any truer measure of a man, than by what he does, it must be, by what he gives."

"Passion is the drunkenness of the mind."

"[S]ociety is built upon trust, and trust upon the confidence that men have of one another's integrity."

"[T]hough reason is not to be relied upon, as a guide universally sufficient to direct us what to do; yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed, where it tells us what we are not to do."

"[N]o man's religion ever survives his morals."

"[T]here never was any heart truly great and generous' that was not also tender and compassionate."

"[W]onder is from surprise; and surprise ceases upon experience."

"Truth itself shall lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none."

"For he that is a good man, is three quarters of his way towards the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called."

"Innocence is like polished armour; it adorns, and it defends."

"[H]e that despairs limits an infinite power to a finite apprehension, and measures Providence by his own little contracted model."

"An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the Rudiments of Paradise."

"Anger [is], according to some, a transient hatred, or at least very like it."

"It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done."

"Oh, when His wisdom can mistake, His might decay, His love forsake, Then may His children cease to sing, — "The Lord omnipotent is King!""

"Self-defence is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it."

"Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps."

"That questionable superfluity—small beer."

"As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate;" and the water, put nought in it malice."

"The sharp employ the sharp; verily, a man may be known by his attorney."

"He was so good he would pour rose-water on a toad."

"The best thing I know between France and England is the sea."

"The life of the husbandman,—a life fed by the bounty of earth and sweetened by the airs of heaven."

"Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half-way to meet it."

"That fellow would vulgarize the day of judgment."

"God said, "Let us make man in our image." Man said, 'Let us make God in our image.""

"He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks."

"Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest."

"The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling."

"Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor's bread."

"All human conflict is ultimately theological."

"The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment."

"In an address before the "Academia," which had been organized to combat "science falsely so called," Cardinal Manning declared his abhorrence of the new view of Nature, and described it as "a brutal philosophy—to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam." …These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion for several years."

"A blessed companion is a book,—a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend."

"The softness, and the glare, and the temptations, and the licence, and the lax examples about us, are more seducing and dangerous than the winter of penal laws. They hardened the manhood of Catholic parents. The summer sun relaxes many."

"A necessity of my reason constrains me to believe the existence of God, because I can in no other way account for my own existence.… I know that I am. I am either uncaused, or self-caused, or caused by a cause."

"Praise consists in the love of God, in wonder at the goodness of God, in recognition of the gifts of God, in seeing God in all things He gives us, ay, and even in the things that He refuses to us; so as to see our whole life in the light of God; and seeing this, to bless Him, adore Him, and glorify Him."

"Twenty errors in practice are as nothing compared with one error in principle. Twenty errors in practice may be corrected, and the twenty-first may never be committed; but one erroneous principle is like a damaged wheel in a machine. It can never work correctly afterwards. One speculative error will produce an infinite series of practical errors. The series is inexhaustible, until the machine itself is either amended or destroyed."

"Our character is our will; for what we will we are."

"Now it is certain, by the voice of all mankind, that God speaks to us through His works—that He whispers to us through our natural conscience—that He attracts us to Him by instincts, and desires, and aspirations after a happiness higher than sense, and more enduring, more changeless, than this mortal life. God speaks to us articulately in the stirring life of nature, and in the silence of our own being."

"What is dogma but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of a divine truth?"

"No ignorance of truth is a personal sin before God, except that ignorance which springs from personal sin."

"There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more—there is action. […] The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look—it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help."

"Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life."

"As a dogma, theologians teach that many belong to the Church who are out of its visible unity; as a moral truth that to be out of the Church is no personal sin, except to those who sin in being out of it. That is, they will be lost, not because they are geographically out of it, but because they are culpably out of it."

"God knows that I would rather stand in the lowest place within the Truth, than in the highest without it. Nay, outside the Truth the higher the worse. It is only so much more opposition to Truth, so much more propagation of falsehood."

"There are only two centres, God and ourselves; and we must rest on one or on the other."

"The everlasting covenant which God has made with Jesus, and through Jesus with all His beloved people, individually, is a strong ground of consolation amidst the tremblings of human hope, the fluctuations of creature things, and the instability of all that earth calls good."

"With trembling hand that from Thy table fall, A weary, heavy laden sinner comes, To plead Thy promise and obey Thy call."