What If Earth Be But The Shadow

He Who Destroys A Good Book Kills Reason Itself.

Truth Is As Impossible To Be Soiled By Any Outward Touch As The Sunbeam.

We Should Be Wary What Persecution We Raise Against The Living Labors Of Public Men, How We Spill That Seasoned Life Of Man, Preserved And Stored Up In Books, Since We See A Kind Of Homicide May Be Thus Committed, Sometimes A Martyrdom; And If It Extend To The Whole Impression, A Kind Of Massacre, Whereof The Execution Ends Not In The Slaying Of An Elemental Life, But Strikes At The Ethereal And Fifth Essence, The Breath Of Reason Itself; Slays An Immortality Rather Than A Life.

Capricious, Wanton, Bold, And Brutal Lust Is Meanly Selfish; When Resisted, Cruel; And, Like The Blast Of Pestilential Winds, Taints The Sweet Bloom Of Nature's Fairest Forms.

Virtue Could See To Do What Virtue Would By Her Own Radiant Light, Though Sun And Moon Were In The Flat Sea Sunk. And Wisdom's Self Oft Seeks To Sweet Retired Solitude, Where With Her Best Nurse Contemplation She Plumes Her Feathers And Lets Grow Her Wings, That In The Various Bustle Of Resort Were All-to Ruffled, And Sometimes Impair'd. He That Has Light Within His Own Clear Breast May Sit I' Th' Centre And Enjoy Bright Day; But He That Hides A Dark Soul And Foul Thoughts Benighted Walks Under The Midday Sun.