“Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.

Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though ‘Tis got by chance, ‘Tis kept by art.

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself, and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!