“When nations are to perish in their sins, ’tis in the Church the leprosy begins.”

The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth.

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.

I am out of humanity’s reach.I must finish my journey alone,Never hear the sweet music of speech;I start at the sound of my own.

Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.

While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.

Pleasure admitted in undue degree, enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour;

Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

Time, as he passes us, has a dove’s wing, Unsoil’d, and swift, and of a silken sound.

Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it.

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connection.

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.

Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.

We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us.

Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

Civilization begins with distillation

a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain.

All diseases begin in the gut.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.