Now you know how much my love for you burns deep in me when I forget about our emptiness, and deal with shadows as with solid things.

The mouse had fallen in with evil cats.

Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than the good.

As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night turn up to the returning sun and spread their petals wide on his new warmth and light-just so my wilted spirits rose again and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins that I was born anew.

Thou shall know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.

To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.

If a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity.