John Quotes

You can make hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell. It's all in the mind.

Contemplation is wisdom's best nurse.

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a world.

Joking decides great things, Stronger and better oft than earnest can.

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Few sometimes may know, when thousands err.

Hell has no benefits, only torture.

And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens take his pleasure.

Part of my soul I seek thee, and claim thee my other half

Suffering for truth's sake Is fortitude to highest victory, And to the faithful death the gate of life.

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.

Fear of change perplexes monarchs.

Infinity is a dark illimitable ocean, without bound.

It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hand to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own is a work of grace only from above.

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap.

But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began.

Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

No institution which does not continually test its ideals, techniques and measure of accomplishment can claim real vitality.

Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes.

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues.

Our reason is our law.

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn.

Incens'd with indignation Satan stood Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.

Wealth and honours, which most men pursue, easily change masters; they desert to the side which excels in virtue, industry, and endurance of toil, and they abandon the slothful.

O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!

Enflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

Fame is the last infirmity of the human mind.

I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.

Those whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

Heav'nly love shall outdoo Hellish hate

The teachers of our law, and to propose What might improve my knowledge or their own.

Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

Still paying, still to owe. Eternal woe!

What honour that, But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear So many hollow compliments and lies.

What am I pondering, you ask? So help me God, immortality.

Who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers?

For God will deign to visit oft the dwellings of just men -- delighted, and with frequent intercourse -- thither will send his winged messengers on errants of supernal grace.

So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In her functions weary of herself.

And to the faithful: death, the gate of life.

The conquer'd, also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose.

But see! theVirgin blessed Hath laid her Babe to rest. Time is our tedious song should here have ending.

Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.

I fled, and cry'd out, Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.

Dark with excessive bright.

Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn, on th' Indian steep From her cabin'd loop-hole peep.