“Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.”

He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.

Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.

All authors to their own defects are blind.

A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.

All delays are dangerous in war.

Honor is but an empty bubble.

And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.

He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.

It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence.

Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.

For they can conquer who believe they can.

They say everything in the world is good for something.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.

Grace draws a circle around everyone and says they’re in.

True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

The shallow end of hope is usually the deep end of grace.

God’s grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me.

Being nice should never be perceived as being weak. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of courtesy, manners, grace, a woman’s ability to make everyone…feel at home, and it should never be construed as weakness.

One of the most gracious dispensations of God concerning His saints is their lovely unawareness of sanctity. The nearer they move to Him, the more conscious are they of sin.

Humility is, of all graces, the chiefest when it does not know itself to be a grace at all.

Grace means we don’t need to airbrush our lives to make them look like they’re working.