The most peaceable way for you if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company. -Much Ado about Nothing. Act iii. Sc. 3.

They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.

Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway.

However important it may be to have a creed that is sound, or an emotion that is warm, the Christian life according to the Gospels is primarily determined by the direction of the will, the fixing of the desire, the habit of obedience, the faculty of decision. If you are determined in your purpose, if you have the will to do the Will, then with half a creed and less than half a pious ecstasy, you are at least in the line of the purpose of Jesus Christ; and as you will to do His will, may come some day to know the teaching.

Oh, father's gone to market-town, he was up before the day, And Jamie's after robins, and the man is making hay, And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill, While mother from the kitchen door is calling with a will, "Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! Oh, where's Polly?"

In any closet, you can find it, if it is too small, or out of style, or there is just one of it where there should be two. I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.

So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!

In my end is my beginning.

Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

Other sports play once a week but this sport is with us every day.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

The basic rule of free enterprise: You must give in order to get.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

The Hidden Power of the Heart Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what's real. -Sara Paddison.

My sorrows are overwhelming, but my virtue is left to me.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organisation. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognise here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose. ... Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God February 2, 2000 THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Persons that are well affected to religion, that receive instructions of piety with pleasure and satisfaction, often wonder how it comes to pass that they make no greater progress in that religion which they so much admire. Now the reason of it is this: it is because religion lives only in their head, but something else has possession of their heart; and therefore they continue from year to year mere admirers and praisers of piety, without ever coming up to the reality and perfection of its precepts.