"Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen."

"For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity."

"For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh."

"It is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war."

"It was pride that changed angels into devils, it is humility that makes men as angels."

"Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak."

"The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them."

"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee."

"Can human folly harbour a more arrogant or ungrateful thought than the notion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart?"

"How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity."

"To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented."

"But if you do not wish to die of thirst in the desert, drink charity. This is the fountain the Lord has willed to place here, lest we faint on the way, and we shall drink it more abundantly when we come to the Fatherland."

"The end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest."

"The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross. But his deformity is our comeliness. In this life, therefore, let us hold fast to the deformed Christ."

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell."

"Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."

"He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake."

"Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his feelings, and the beatings of his heart."

"He that becomes protector of sin shall surely become its prisoner."

"And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand."

"We speak, but it is God who teaches."

"There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own."

"Do not feel surprise at being schooled amid toil: you are being schooled for a wondrous destiny."

"He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother."

"For it is one thing to see the Land of Peace from a wooded ridge, and yet another to walk the road that leads to it."

"The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it."

"What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God."

"You never depart from us, but yet, only with difficulties do we return to You."

"Love the sinner and hate the sin."

"Right is right even if no one is doing it, wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it."

"You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things."

"Hence, you see your faith, you see your doubt, you see your desire and will to learn, and when you are induced by divine authority to believe what you do not see, you see at one that you believe these things; you analyze and discern all this."

"Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence."

"I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them."

"Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing."

"I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed."

"For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?"

"He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will."

"You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know.... For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the advantage of knowledge."

"Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good."

"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?"

"If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God."

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas,at the long course of the rivers,at the vast compass of the ocean,at the circular motion of the stars,and yet they pass by themselves without wondering."

"The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page."

"I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people."

"The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works."

"When consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire. When consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy."

"Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men."

"Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again."

"There could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that by the mercy of God they who are endowed with true piety of life if they have the skill for ruling people should also have the power."