It is not victory to slink from the fight and shut oneself up in a fortress that is guarded by others.

Men and women must be good men and women in this world if they hope to be saints hereafter, and there is no such thing as inactive goodness.' Sister Giovanna looked at him again, but still she did not speak.
'Though I am a priest,' continued Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I am a man of the world in the sense of having belonged to it, and I now live less apart from it than I could wish, though it is not such a thoroughly bad place as those say who do not know it.

I do not feel that I got rid of all obligations to those who still belong to it when I was ordained, and I do not think that when you took the veil in a working order, you dropped all obligation to the persons with whom you had lived till then.

In doing so, you might be depriving some one else of a right.' Sister Giovanna listened to this exposition in silence and tried to follow it.
'In my opinion,' the prelate went on, 'Giovanni Severi has a just claim to see you.

I speak under authority and I may be wrong, but it can only be a matter of judgment and of opinion, and since your Mother Superior has asked for mine, I give it as well as I can.