What is resignation? It is putting God between one’s self and one’s grief.

Might we not say to the confused voices which sometimes arise from the depths of our being: “Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?”

The Christian’s God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: ’tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.

He who has ceased to enjoy his friend’s superiority has ceased to love him.

There is, by God’s grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.

Virtue is the daughter of Religion; Repentance, her adopted child, – a poor orphan who, without the asylum which she offers, would not know where to hide her sole treasure, her tears!

The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack.

Prayer has a right to the word “ineffable.” It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express, – of that interior speech which we do not articulate, even when we employ it.

Poor humanity! – so dependent, so insignificant, and yet so great.

Miracles are God’s coups d’etat.