Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.

Even a small star shines in the darkness.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times.

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 Though natural men, who have induced secondary and figurative consideration, have found out this... emblematical use of sleep, that it should be a representation of death, God, who wrought and perfected his work, before Nature began, (for Nature was but his Apprentice, to learn in the first seven days, and now is his foreman, and works next under him) God, I say, intended sleep only for the refreshing of man by bodily rest, and not for a figure of death, for he intended not death itself then. But Man having induced death upon himself, God hath taken Man's Creature, death, into his hand, and mended it, and whereas it hath in itself a fearfull form and aspect, so that Man is afraid of his own Creature, God presents it to him, in a familiar, in an assiduous, in an agreeable and acceptable form, in sleep, that so when he awakes from sleep and says to himself, shall I be no otherwise when I am dead, than I was even now, when I was asleep, he may be ashamed of his waking dreams, and of his Melancholique fancying out a horrid and an affrightful figure of that death which is so like sleep. As then we need sleep to live out our threescore and ten years, so we need death, to live that life which we cannot out-live.

Treading beneath their feet all visible things, As steps that upwards to their Father's throne Lead gradual.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

I am almost frightened out of my seven senses.

What if in Scotland's wilds we viel'd our head, Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed; Where the rug's two-fold use we might display, By night a blanket, and a plaid by day.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people: they go commonly together.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Past and to come seems best; things present worst. -King Henry IV. Part II. Act i. Sc. 3.

I think the Romans call it Stoicism.

A habit of devout fellowship with God is the spring of all our life, and the strength of it.

And bid the devil take the hin'most.