It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hand to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own is a work of grace only from above.

Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?

I fled, and cry'd out, Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.

And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung.

It is not good that man should be alone. ... Hitherto all things that have been named, were approved of God to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good: whether it be a thing, or the want of something, I labour not.

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, and all her various objects of delight annulled, which might in part my grief have eased. Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, they creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed to daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, within doors, or without, still as a fool, in power of others, never in my own; scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

So dear I love him, that with him, all deaths I could endure, without him, live no life.