The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of cabinets and foreign offices.
A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all.
The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding places.
One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface.
He who labours, prays.
Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
Grace comes immediately to meet some of those who strive, giving them assurance of the earnest of their inheritance (cf. Eph. 1:14), letting them taste the promised prizes, as if stretching out a loving hand to welcome them and anointing them for further struggles. With others, however, grace waits for the end of the struggle, and prepares for them the crown of patience as well. As one of the God-bearing Fathers says, 'Some receive holy rewards before their labours, some during labours, and some when they depart' (St. John Climacus).
The devil does not bring sinners to hell with their eyes open: he first blinds them with the malice of their own sins. Before we fall into sin, the enemy labours to blind us, that we may not see the evil we do and the ruin we bring upon ourselves by offending God. After we commit sin, he seeks to make us dumb, that, through shame, we may conceal our guilt in confession.
The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.
He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
