The massive gates of circumstance Are turned upon the smallest hinge, And thus some seeming pettiest chance Oft gives our life its after-tinge. The trifles of our daily lives, The common things, scarce worth recall, Whereof no visible trace survives, These are the mainsprings after all.

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.

Thank God for poverty That makes and keeps us free, And lets us go our unobtrusive way, Glad of the sun and rain, Upright, serene, humane, Contented with the fortune of a day.

For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

In men, we various ruling passions find; In women two almost divide the kind; Those only fix'd, they first or last obey. The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.

Feast of Columba, Abbot of Iona, Missionary, 597 Commemoration of Ephrem of Syria, Deacon, Hymnographer, Teacher, 373 If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history off the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.

Patience is sorrow's salve.

Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along too.

Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.

That perfect devoting ourselves to God, from which devotion has its name, requires that we should not only do the will of God, but also that we should do it with love. "He loveth a cheerful giver," and without the heart no obedience is acceptable to Him.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no one say that he cannot shine because he has not so much influence as some others may have. What God wants you to do is to use the influence you have. Daniel probably did not have much influence down in Babylon at first, but God soon gave him more because he was faithful and used what he had.

We probably wouldn't worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.

Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind.