Robert Southey
Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself.
No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
If there be any truer message of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.