The best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

My fears are agitated to an extreme degree and the dread of death involves me in a stupor of chilling indisposition.

I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seems careless of having anything to do with — they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I shoud mention them in my writings & I find more pleasure in wandering the fields then in mixing among my silent neighbours who are insensible of everything but toiling & talking of it & that to no purpose.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost; And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze; The place we occupy seems all the world.