Great Throughts Treasury

"To ascend to God is to enter into oneself, and not only to enter into oneself, but, in some unsayable manner, in the inmost parts to pass beyond oneself. He who can, as it were, enter into himself and, going deeper and deeper, pass beyond himself, truly ascends to God."

"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land."

"Twofold is the fruit of sacred reading, because it either instructs the mind with knowledge or it equips it with morals. It teaches what it delights us to know and what it behooves us to imitate."