It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance its allotted length.
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their “large loves and heavenly charities.”
I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most philosophical.
I do think of love sometimes, but it is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.
I believe that life is given us so we may grow in love, and I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower-the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.
Faith is a mockery if it teaches us not that we may construct a world unspeakably more complete and beautiful than the material world.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
