No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.

Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.

Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.

Will is not unfrequently weakness.

Common people, whether lords or shop-keepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth or lands or money or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.

If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?