Great Throughts Treasury

"What is foreseen by the mind is lighter to bear."

"Reprove the wise: your words will bring you thanks."

"Nothing is sweeter than the calm of conscience, nothing safer than purity of soul - yet no one can bestow this on himself because it is properly the gift of God's grace."

"It is my design to die in the brew-house; let ale be placed to my mouth when I am expiring, that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, "Be God propitious to this drinker.""

"I am a lowly creature but I am still God's servant, and I hope that he will choose to wake me from slumber. I hope that he will set me on fire with the flame of his divine love, the flame that burns above the stars, so that I am filled with desire for his love and his fire burns always within me!"

"Lord, I pray that You may be a lamp for me in the darkness. Touch my soul and kindle a fire within it, that it may burn brightly and give light to my life. Thus my body may truly become Your temple, lit by Your perpetual flame burning on the altar of my heart. And may the light within me shine on my brothers and sisters that it may drive away the darkness of ignorance and sin from them also. Thus let us be lights to the world, manifesting the bright beauty of Your gospel to all around us."

"All we Irish dwelling on the edge of the world are disciples of Saints Peter and Paul and of the disciples who, under the Holy Spirit, wrote the Sacred Canon. We accept nothing outside this evangelical and apostolic teaching. There was no heretic, no Jew, no schismatic, but the Catholic Faith, as first delivered to us by you, the successor of the apostles, is kept unshaken.... We, indeed, are, as I have said, chained to the Chair of Saint Peter; for although Rome is great and known afar, it is great and honored with us only by this Chair. "

"Nothing is sweeter than the calm of conscience, nothing safer than purity of soul - yet no one can bestow this on himself because it is properly the gift of God's grace."