"Everyone who understands the nature of God rightly necessarily knows that God is to be believed and hoped in, that he is to be loved and called upon, and to be heard in all things."

"From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us the hearing of the word and prayer."

"The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God."

"The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal."

"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another."

"I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people."

"We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information."

"The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too."