Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.

You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.

Life delights in life.

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.

I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies & chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; and whose works are the delight & study of Archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality?

Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?