“What reinforcement we may gain from hope; If not, what resolution from despair.”
“To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.”
“And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, consult how we may henceforth most offend.”
“He who reins within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king”
“It is not miserable to be blind; it is miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness.”
“Let none admire that riches grow in hell; that soil may best deserve the precious bane.”
“The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him.”
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we awake.”
“Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, not peace.”
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
“These two imparadised in one another's arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss.”
“And when night, darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.”
“For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.”
“Prudence is the virtue by which we discern what is proper to do under various circumstances in time and place.”
“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”
“A good book is the precious life-blood of the master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond.”
“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train.”
“Adam inquires concerning celestial motions, is doubtfully answered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledge.”
“When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.”
“What call thou solitude? Is not the earth with various living creatures, and the air replenished, and all these at thy command to come and play before thee?”
“How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! how glad would lay me down, as in my mother's lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.”
“Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.”
“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
“This is the month, and this the happy morn, wherein the Son of heaven's eternal King, of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born, our great redemption from above did bring.”
“He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the mid-day sun;”
“How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute, and a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.”
“Those graceful acts, those thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions, mixed with love and sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned union of mind, or in us both one soul.”
“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
“A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.”