Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? What sinews are those? - A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolutions; unerring decisions.

We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

You don't drown by falling in water. You only drown if you stay there.

No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves.

Holiness is not freedom from temptation, but power to overcome temptation.

Oh! how amazing it is that people can talk so much about men's power and goodness, when if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate!

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol -- cross or crescent or whatever -- that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Anyone, then, who desires to live chastely in Christ Jesus, must flee not only the mouse of lust, but even from its very scent.

The devil tempts that he may ruin; God tests that he may crown.

At the moment I sin, I desire the sin more than I desire to please God.

No sin, no matter how momentarily pleasurable, comforting, or habitual, is worth missing what God has for us.