“What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred or ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”

“We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.”

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

“He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.”

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.”

“The fact of that devotion is nothing less than sacrifice. The only good of which mortals are capable of love. To even begin to do good, one must be willing to go beyond oneself. All things made by man perish. All words scatter into the emptiness that is the future. Only love endures. Love for what is. Not for what was or could be. Love for what is—that alone is true love. That alone the future cannot dissolve. For that love is God.”