“We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it. Our too great love for it makes us restless with fears, burdens us with cares, and exposes us to insults.”

“Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing.”

“No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours.”

“We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.”

“If we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago.”

“We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.”

“The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”