If faith fails, prayer perishes.

Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying.

Whole prayer is nothing but love.

O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will, so that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will.

What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!

In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.

If God seems slow in responding, it is because He is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for His greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart.

People travel to marvel at the mountains, seas, rivers and stars; and they pass right by themselves without astonishment.

Salvation is God's way of making us real people.

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

The human race is inquisitive about other people's lives, but negligent to correct their own.

What then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers? But the weaker men are, the more they are troubled by such matters. Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs, by which it is difficult not to be puffed up in some way; even a knowledge of things often makes people boastful, unless their necks are held down by the Lord's yoke.

Consequently, if the republic is the weal of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice.

When large numbers of people share their joy in common, the happiness of each is greater because each adds fuel to the other's flame.

The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.

The customs of God's people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God.

God's faithful servant has no desire for people to say or to give to him, or what he likes to hear or see, for his first and greatest aim is to hear what is most pleasing to God.

You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.

In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.

When people truly open their minds, and contemplate the way in which the universe is ordered and governed, they are amazed-overwhelmed by a sense of the miraculous. When people contemplate with open minds the germination of a single seed, they are equally overwhelmed-yet numerous babies are born every day, and no-one marvels. If only people opened their minds, they would see that the birth of a baby, in which a new life is created, is a greater miracle than restoring life.

For God loves saving, not condemning, and therefore He is patient with bad people, in order to make good people out of bad people.

Let the Lord your God be your hope – seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself.

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.

The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.

Let us sing a new song, not with our lips, but with our lives.

Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest. . . . And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.

What am I then, my God? What is my nature? A life varied, multifaceted and truly immense.

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.

Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul's beauty.

Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother.

Where love is, what can be wanting? Where it is not, what can possibly be profitable?

We should never use the truth to wound.

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.