It is not 'seeing' the light that impacts one's life; it is never 'ceasing' to see the light that impresses one's life, spirit, heart and soul.

The conception of the Church which we tend to reproduce as the fruit of our missionary work is so much a replica of our own, so much that of a fundamentally settled body existing for the sake of its own members rather than that of a body of strangers and pilgrims, the sign and instrument of a supernatural and universal salvation to be revealed, that our missionary advance tends to follow the lines of cultural and political expansion. and to falter when that advance stops.

If God bores you, tell Him that He bores you, that you prefer the vilest amusements to His presence, that you only feel at your ease when you are far from Him.

I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have my will, and having my will, I should be contented; and when one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.

Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century "The Law", he says, "was our 'pedagogue', until Christ should come." Those words have been interpreted as though they described the Law as a preparatory education, continued at a higher stage by Christ. That, however, is not quite what Paul meant. The "pedagogue" in Greek society was not a schoolmaster, he did not give lessons. He was a slave who accompanied a boy to school, and both waited upon him and exercised a supervision which interfered with the boy's freedom of action. He is, in fact, a figure in the little allegory which Paul gives us to illustrate the position of the People of God before Christ came. There was a boy left heir to a great estate. He was a minor, and so must have guardians and trustees. He was as helpless in their hands as if he had been a slave. He must live on the allowance they gave him, and follow their wishes from day to day. They gave him a "pedagogue" to keep him out of mischief. He could not please himself, or realize his own purposes and ambitions. Yet all the time he was the heir; the estate was his, and no one else's. Just so the People of God, the Divine Commonwealth, was cramped and fettered by ignorance and evil times. It remained in uneasy expectation of one day coming into active existence. At last the heir came of age: guardians and trustees abdicated their powers, and the grown man possessed in full realization all that was his. So now the fettered life of the Divine Commonwealth bursts its bonds and comes into active existence... The intervention of law was not a reversal of God's original and eternal purpose of pure love and grace towards men, it only subserved that purpose, while it seemed to contradict it, just as the presence of the "pedagogus" might seem to the high-spirited young heir quite contrary to the rights secured to him by his father's will.

The society of women is the element of good manners.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, tho it be in the woods.

Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn't have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn't have to hear about the way his mother cooked.

The key to your universe is that you can choose.

The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness; carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousness into guiltlessness; guiltlessness into abstemiousness; abstemiousness into cleanliness; cleanliness into godliness.

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail A fox caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail. Thereafter, feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule to which he was exposed, he schemed to convince all the other Foxes that being tailless was much more attractive, thus making up for his own deprivation. He assembled a good many Foxes and publicly advised them to cut off their tails, saying that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great inconvenience. One of them interrupting him said, If you had not yourself lost your tail, my friend, you would not thus counsel us.

After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?

If my best wines mislike thy taste, And my best service win thy frown, Then tarry not, I bid thee haste; There's many another Inn in town.

From compromise and things half done, Keep me with stern and stubborn pride; And when at last the fight is won, God, keep me still unsatisfied.