Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves -- blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One.

You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble.

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

From the persistence of noise comes the insistence of rage. From the emergence of tone comes the divergence of thought. From the enlightenment of music comes the wisdom of... silence.

In various talk th' instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At every word a reputation dies.

You're never a loser until you quit trying.

Self-denial is painful for a moment, but very agreeable in the end.

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.

A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

Not to be avaricious is money; not to be fond of buying is a revenue; but to be content with our own is the greatest and most certain wealth of all.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

What are the wild waves saying, Sister, the whole day long, That ever amid our playing I hear but their low, lone song?

They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

I experimented with marijuana a time or two. And I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale and never tried it again.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want. -Jonathan Swift.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to His mind and will.