“Our life is determined for us — and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.”

“When we surrender when we do not fight with life when it calls upon us we are lifted and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us.”

“Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.”

“What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.”

“Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.”

“"The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."”

“Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what were doing; but it become a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of our life.”

“When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many things!”

“What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.”

“We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.”