This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.
"Let your occupations be few," says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."
A line by Thomas à Kempis which perhaps could be used as a motto sometime. He says of Paul: Therefore he turned everything over to God, who knows all, and defended himself solely by means of patience and humility. He did defend himself now and then so that the weak would not be offended by his silence.
Discretion is the best form of calculation.
Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present.... Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material.... Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.
It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, "It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a God."
Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.
Ignorance never settles a question.
Never take anything for granted.
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.