It has always happened hitherto that whenever I have begun to feel an attachment to places, persons, or things, of a merely temporary nature, I have been carried away from them. Amen! May I live as a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth. May we be brought to that better country where painful changes are known no more.

I have rightfully no other business each day but to do God's work as a servant, constantly regarding His pleasure. May I have grace to live above every human motive, simply with God and to God.

If [God] has work for me to do, I cannot die.

How or by what magic is it, that we convey our thoughts to one another with such case and accuracy?

My soul, alas, needs these uneasinesses in outward things, to be driven to take refuge in God.

The man who pauses in his honesty wants little of a villain.

Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before. I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, or religion has refined my mind and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful. O, how religion secures the heightened enjoyment of those pleasures which keep so many from God, by their becoming a source of pride!