No doubt alcohol tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

Courage is a warrior, wisdom is a sage, virtue is a priest, and love is poet.

Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle!Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit? Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit?Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? – And they also make newspapers from these rags!Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words? It vomits our repulsive verbal swill! – And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill.They pursue one another and do not know where. They inflame one another, and do not know why. They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold.They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion.All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues.

Lend your ears to the deaf, your eyes to the blind, your hands to the weak, your tongue to the mute, your mind to the perplexed, and your heart to the weary.

The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear.

Anyone can be a hero, even those who cannot!

The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn’t matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we may stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God.

Honor must start in the heart, but if it ends there, it isn’t honor. Honor must be expressed through words, symbols, actions, or gestures. Honor is among the most incarnational of the virtues. It must have feet and hands.

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.

The offspring of virtue is perseverance. The fruit and offspring of perseverance is habit and child of habit is character.