“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great
“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be
“Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
“In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
“Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense
“I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred - that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt
“What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic
“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization