Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.

Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.

It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.

Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice; Where Heaven divided faiths united finds: But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast; Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.