If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you.

- the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.

Always wanting another man than your own.

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.