“The nature of rumor is well known to all. It was your own poet who said: ‘Rumor, an evil surpassing all evils in speed.’”

Christians are made, not born.

Patience is God’s nature.

Those who fled will fight another time.

Custom without truth is error grown old.

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

If the sky stands still, if the earth quakes, if there is famine, if there is pestilence, at once the cry is raised: Throw the Christians to the lions! So many to one?

Woman is a temple built over a sewer.

It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.

To forbid birth is only quicker murder.

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

It is certain because it is possible.

A man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.

The blood of the Christians is seed.

We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, “We worship God through Christ!” Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.

Shall we carry a flag? It is a rival to Christ.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass

Beauty is no dead thing. It is the manifestation of God in nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God’s manifestation is beauty. It shines through all His works, and not only in those that may give pleasure to man.

Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, Who is the day through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour; of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.

You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it!

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.

Toil and pleasure, dissimilar in nature, are nevertheless united by a certain natural bond.

The soul grows by reincarnation in bodies provided by nature, more complex, more powerful, as the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And so the soul climbs upward into the light eternal. And there is no fear for any child of man, for inevitably he climbs towards God.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.