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.

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condenced, the deeper they burn.

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.

- Robert Southey