“ Madam Barat used to say to her mistresses that to become a stream one must first be a fountain head. We can give but what we have, and, in the deepest sense, we can teach but what we love. Is it credible that they who work for money should do more perfect work and be made thereby more perfect than they who work for truth and love? The ideal which our striving and yearnings have made living within us stamps itself on the minds and hearts of those whom we influence. The life we lead, vastly more than the words we speak, makes us centers of light and force. ”

“ All things become for him the materials for the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life. And still he hungers and thirsts for new sensations. He becomes the slave and victim of low desire. The passions, which are meant for life and joy, are perverted to the service of misery and death. Their reek rises to darken the mind, to harden the heart and to paralyze the will. Love is driven from its celestial home and cast into the soil and mire of the animal nature. The soul is bowed beneath the weight of the body, and compelled to do its ignoble behests. ”

“ The bonds love weaves about us are not chains, but freedom's livery. The most generous are the happiest, and the most fortunate are not those who receive or gain the greatest possessions, but those who with a loving heart make the greatest sacrifices. They are not confused or dominated by the problems and doubts of their time, but rise from out the riddles of existence into serene worlds where duty is plain. Passing by the unfathomable mysteries of human life, they do their work with hearts as glad as that of a child singing in its father's house. ”

“ Greed, in drying up the fountains of noble life within, reduces its slaves to a kind of machine, whose one office is to get gold. It degrades all their impulses and passions. They are not ambitious of glory or fame or honor, or of any noble kind of influence or power, but all their ambition falls upon matter. Their sole desire, their one thought, is to amass wealth. They are not jealous of those who excel them in moral or intellectual qualities, who have more faith or genius or virtue than they, but of those alone who have greater possessions. ”

“ Let her love beauty, and strive to make herself and the world beautiful; but let her understand that a hard and proud heart, a vacant and vulgar mind, not a plain face, is ugly, and that a countenance over which innocence, cheerfulness and intelligence are diffused is necessarily fair. Vanity and selfishness, greed and sensuality, envy and pride, spite and cowardice, spoil all loveliness and mar all life. Nothing horrible or dreadful can happen to us except through our own fault and folly, and the greatest misery is the consciousness of our own sin. Virtue alone brings sure and abiding joy. ”

“ Is it incredible that He who makes and holds the universe in poise should love? And if He loves, is it incredible that He should love those whom He has made capable of love, in whose spiritual being He has awakened a quenchless thirst for truth, goodness and beauty?
Whatever man may think, woman cannot doubt that God is love, or that Christ is that love made manifest. She is the heart, he the mind; and great thoughts spring from the heart. She lies closer to the sources of life, to the faith and wonder of children, to the supreme reality that is veiled by what appears ”

“ Virtue is love rightly ordered, and disorderly love is the mother of all depravity. In nothing is this seen in such lurid light as in the perversion of the instinct which, intended for the propagation of the race, is debased to a means of moral and physical degradation and death. More than war and pest and famine and drunkenness, this abject vice dishonors, blights and poisons the flower and fruit of human life. It murders love and makes hope a mockery and a curse. It defiles with its polluting touch the brow of childhood, the cheek of youth, the lips of maidenhood. ”

“ In the days of persecution she suffers at Rome, at Lyons, at Carthage, the worst that fiendish cruelty can invent with a heroism and serene cheerfulness which men have never surpassed. The desert has no terrors for her if her life be hidden in God with Christ, and as wife and mother she inspires a reverence and confidence that fill the home with a joy and peace which make it a symbol of heaven. The Church itself, the bride of Christ and the mother of souls, appears to her faithful children in the semblance of a woman clothed with chastity and beauty and transfigured by love. ”

“ As life is a continuous victory over its changing environments, it is natural that the soul should seek to fix what is fleeting in its existence by holding steadfastly to the times and places that are most sacred. Thus in memory we are glad to gather about the homes of our childhood, while the fields and the hills, the clouds and the stars, the birds and the domestic animals even, return to help complete the scene; from the midst of which those about whom our earliest and purest affections centered look forth upon us again with a love that seems eternal. ”

“ The only true prosperity is prosperity of soul, and material progress, unless it be sustained by religious and moral progress, ends in decadence and ruin. If all is well within circumstances are never intolerable, but if inner wholeness be lacking we are wretched, though we be clothed with the pomp and majesty of kings.
What a gracious inspiration was that of Madam Barat, who, when she was drawn to found a society whose chief work should be education, felt that first of all it was necessary that she should baptize herself and her companions in the fountain head of divine love! ”

“ Looking to Mary as their model, whether mothers, wives or consecrated virgins,—to Mary whom none have invoked in vain, whom none have served and not been made thereby lowly-minded and chaste,—they founded the home, converted nations, upheld empires, taught in universities and inspired the enthusiasm which created the Christian chivalry dedicated to the honor of womanhood and to the defense of all that is helpless; springing like a fair flower from the double root of chastity and love to sweeten the air and fill the world with high thoughts and aims. ”

“ The seasons come and depart, the flowers bloom and fade, the young grow old and the old pass away, but the soul is an abiding principle of life and love which, though the visible universe should vanish utterly, would still find itself at home with the Eternal, with God. The stronger the individual, the more permanent the family, the more vital and persistent the religion, the greater is the power to inspire memories that last. Saints and heroes are the hinges on which the opening and shutting doors of history turn. ”

“ The old world is dying, and the new is waiting to be born. A new religion is here founded on new conceptions of God and of man,—on new conceptions of man's duties to God, to himself and to his fellows; on the faith that the Eternal and Omnipotent, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are, is a father who has care of even the least of His children, and who so loves them that He sends His Divine Son to teach and guide them, to suffer and die for them.
Since God is love, love is the supreme law of the universe, and man's first duty and highest perfection is to love God and all men. ”

“ This may mean that the helpless condition in which poverty places them is ever a source of anxiety and dread, but rather, I think, that this anxiety and dread are themselves poverty; while they who possess nothing but have faith and courage and love are rich enough and free enough from fear. The possessions to which we cling breed cowardice, but wealth of soul is confidence and strength. He who loves is rich, for love creates its world and fills the desert or the prison cell with a light and joy which the loveless, though they dwell in palaces, can never know. ”

“ How joyously they take up their work, seeking the lost sheep in interminable forests, in unexplored islands; confronting barbarous chiefs and hordes inured to rapine and blood, uttering the praise of lowly-mindedness and cleanness of heart, of peace and mildness, of love and mercy, where such words had never been spoken before,—to men whose whole theory and practice of life was war and robbery and extermination; who had not even the idea of humanity, but considered all who were not united to them by ties of blood as natural enemies! ”

“ She feels what only the wisest know—that the radical fault is lack of love; that if men did but love enough all would be well. From the dawn of history she had been the great prisoner of faith, hope and love. With a divine capacity for the highest spiritual life and the highest spiritual influence she had been made a drudge, a slave, a means, an instrument. As it is easy to hate those whom we have wronged, the pagan world, having degraded and outraged woman, seemed to take pleasure in heaping scorn and ignominy upon her, and even to-day in heathen lands her lot is little better. ”

“ Let no woman believe there is aught of good in weakness. There is no joy but in strength—strength of body, strength of mind, strength of heart, strength of soul. "To be weak is to be miserable." Faith is strength, virtue is strength, wisdom is strength, love is strength, health is strength. What a happy thing it is that the higher education of women tends to make them physically even superior to their sisters who are content with idleness and ignorance! ”

“ HATEVER brings us into personal relations with wider worlds, with larger and more enduring life, gives us a sense of freedom and joy; for we are the prisoners of faith, hope and love, and are driven to make ceaseless appeal to them to enlarge the confining walls; to constitute us, if so it may be, dwellers in a boundless universe, where truth and beauty and goodness are infinite; where what uplifts and deifies is eternal; where, ceasing to be the slaves of animal needs, we are made citizens of a spiritual kingdom and have divine leisure to live for and in the soul. ”

“ As they seek not honors and distinctions, they are not fascinated by the glitter of gold—the world's great idol, master and slave. They know that the only true wealth is life, since life, ever more perfect life, is the supreme and final end of action; and that, more than almost any other passion, greed—the love of money—destroys in men the power to form right estimates of life and conduct, for it forces them to look away from the perfecting of their own being and the good of their fellows to what is material and external, and therefore but incidental. ”

“ Can we not read in the countenances of those who love her truly the story of lives of patience and reverence, purity and mildness? How unwearyingly do they labor! How serenely when death comes do they rest from their labors! What a heavenly spell has she not thrown, does she not still throw, over innumerable souls, creating in them habits of thought, love and deed, against which theories of whatever kind are advanced in vain! They have made experiment; they have tasted the waters of life ”

“ At the age of sixteen, in the flower of health and beauty, she had seen the vanity of all that comes to end, and had turned with resolute will from her happy home and the promises of the world to give her whole heart to the service of the Blessed Saviour, and for sixty years, even unto death, she followed after Him with a courage that never failed and a love that never grew cold. ”

“ Of what evils is not greed the fountain head? It darkens the mind, dulls the wits, hardens the heart, warps the conscience and perverts the understanding. It breeds hate, dissension, injustice and oppression; makes thieves, liars, usurers, cowards, perjurers, adulterators of food and drink and antisocial criminals of every kind. It stirs up wars of conquest, robs whole nations and stares in stolid indifference while its victims starve by the million. It is more insatiable than lust, and more cruel than revenge. ”

“ To be praised for love and love's work seems little less than mockery, and when we are wholly in earnest words of flattery are as disagreeable as the buzzing of insects. In the presence of heroic souls vain speech is doubly vain, and we best show our reverence for the noble dead not by eulogy, but by acting in their spirit and by faithfully striving to continue the work they began. ”