“Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.”

“Despondency is not a state of humility; on the contrary, it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride--nothing is worse; whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on course.”

“Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.”

“The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.”

“If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe,were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading,I would spurn them all.”

“If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading I would spurn them all.”

“True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.”