And yet on the other hand unless warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image, but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.
It is not good that man should be alone. ... Hitherto all things that have been named, were approved of God to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good: whether it be a thing, or the want of something, I labour not.
Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
When a king sets himself to bandy against the highest court and residence of all regal powers, he then, in the single person of a man, fights against his own majesty and kingship.
And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the checkered shade. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.
And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience to attain To something like prophetic strain.
How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! How glad would lay me down, as in my mother's lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.