“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization
“It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done
“The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire
“If it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers.
“What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic
“Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.
“The longest day must have its close -the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day
“I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred - that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt
“In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike
“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women