Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

I seek for one as fair and gay, But find none to remind me, How blest the hours pass'd away With the girl I left behind me.

Had the devil come to our first parents personally and unmasked, they would have more easily seen the deception.

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Faith is rest, not toil. It is the giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the truth so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own poor performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free love of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Tempt not a desperate man.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

But, O thou tyrant, Do not repent these things, for they are heavier Than all thy woes can stir. Therefore betake thee To nothing but despair.

And these vicissitudes come best in youth, For when they happen at a riper age, People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth, And wonder Providence is not more sage. Adversity is the first path to truth: He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage, Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty, Has won experience which is deem'd so weighty.

Commemoration of Crispin & Crispinian, Martyrs at Rome, c.285 If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers -- had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant prayers for them -- they would have been much more in the way of success.

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, May hope to achieve it before life be done, But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of barren regrets.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen stall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must when our cause it is just. And this be our motto, "In God is our trust!" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.

Business is more exciting than any game.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

I refuse to engage in an intellectual battle with an unarmed man.

Women do most delight in revenge.

To say nothing of its holiness or authority, the Bible contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic, throng the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.