Yet we always envy others, comparing our shadows to their sunlit sides.

So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

Defeat I can endure with cheerfulness, my lady. But betrayal is like taking the wind from my sails, or the earth from beneath my feet. It chills my spirits like a rainy day, and all I can do is draw the curtains and cry into my pillow.

The most wicked criminals have God on their lips at all times, for God is the only one who can stomach them.

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church.

Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity.

One always imagines that the days that change one’s life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential.