If I Wished To Punish My Enemy,

We Are Apt To Mistake Our Vocation By Looking Out Of The Way For Occasions To Exercise Great And Rare Virtues, And By Stepping Over The Ordinary Ones That Lie Directly In The Road Before Us.

Nothing Is More Common Than To Mistake The Sign For The Thing Itself; Nor Is Any Practice More Frequent Than That Of Endeavoring To Acquire The Exterior Mark, Without Once Thinking To Labor After The Interior Grace.

Sensibility Appears To Me To Be Neither Good Nor Evil In Itself, But In Its Application. Under The Influence Of Christian Principle, It Makes Saints And Martyrs; Ill-directed, Or Uncontrolled, It Is A Snare, And The Source Of Every Temptation; Besides, As People Cannot Get It If It Is Not Given Them, To Descant On It Seems To Me As Idle As To Recommend People To Have Black Eyes Or Fair Complexions.

Outward Attacks And Troubles Rather Fix Than Unsettle The Christian, As Tempests From Without Only Serve To Root The Oak Faster; While An Inward Canker Will Gradually Rot And Decay It.

In Grief We Know The Worst Of What We Feel But Who Can Tell The End Of What We Fear?