“I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

“Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.”

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

“Growth is the only evidence of life.”

“Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.”

“Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.”

“The night is dark and I am far from home.”

“Lead kindly Light amid the encircling gloom Lead Thou me on! The night is dark and I am far from home - Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet I do not ask to see The distant scene - one step enough for me.”

“God has created me to do some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.”

“It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.”

“God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.”