"Every sober reader will easily perceive that I do not intend to lessen the true and great value of prayers, either public or private, but only to show him that they are certainly but a very slender part of devotion when compared with a devout life. Bended knees while you are clothed with pride; heavenly petitions while you are hoarding up treasures upon the earth; holy devotions while you live in the follies of the world; prayers of meekness and charity while your heart is the seat of pride and resentment; hours of prayer, while you give up days and years to idle diversions, are as absurd and unacceptable services to God as forms of thanksgiving from a person who lives in repining and discontent. Unless the common course of our lives be according to the common spirit of our prayers, our prayers are so far from being a real or sufficient devotion that they become empty lip labor or, what is worse, a notorious hypocrisy." William Law.

"Many make it more their study to know than to live well, therefore are they often deceived, and bring forth none or very little fruit. Oh, if men would use as much diligence in rooting out vices and planting virtues as they do in proposing questions there would not be so great evils committed, and scandals among the people, nor so much relaxation in the churches." Thomas A. Kempis

"What availeth a great dispute about abstruse and obscure matters for the not knowing which, we shall not be questioned at the day of judgment? It is a great folly for us to neglect things profitable and necessary, and willingly to busy ourselves about those which are curious and hurtful. "We have eyes and see not."  

Many make it more their study to know than to live well, therefore are they often deceived, and bring forth none or very little fruit. Oh, if men would use as much diligence in rooting out vices and planting virtues as they do in proposing questions there would not be so great evils committed, and scandals among the people, nor so much relaxation in the churches. 

Truly, when the day of judgment comes, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how learnedly we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived.
How many perish in the world through vain learning, who little care for the service of God! And because they chose rather to be great than to be humble they are lost to their own imaginations."  
Thomas A. Kempis, "The imitation of Christ." The most read devotional book in the world.

  The word "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. 
I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own... We had each of us some whimsy in the brain, which we believed more than anything else, and which discolored all experience to its own shade. How would you have people agree, when one is deaf and the other blind? R.L.Stevenson. 

I read, dear friend, in your dear face
Your life's tale told with perfect grace; 
The river of your life, I trace
up the sun-checkered, devious bed
To the far-distant fountain head. 

Not one quick beat of your warm heart, 
Nor thought that came to you apart,
Pleasure nor pity, love nor pain
Nor sorrow, has gone by in vain; 

But as some lone, wood-wandering child
Brings home with him at evening mild
The thorns and flowers of all the wild,
From your whole life, O fair and true,
Your flowers and thorns you bring with you!" 
R.L. Stevenson 

  "You speak of your lack of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants; you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men, of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not very wise -- and yet I think I am -- but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. You are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doctoring a toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as honor and love and faith are not only nobler than food and drink, but indeed I think we desire them more, and suffer more sharply for their absence." 
Robert Louis Stevenson. 

  "Miranda never lacks compassion, even to common beggars -- especially toward those who are old or sick, or full of sores, or who lack eyes or limbs. If a poor old traveler tells her that he has neither strength nor food nor money left, she never tells him that she cannot relieve him because he may be a cheat or because she does not know him. But she relieves him because he is a stranger and unknown to her. Miranda considers that our blessed Savior and his apostles were kind to beggars-- that they spoke comfortably with them, healed their diseases, and restored eyes and limbs to the lame and blind. Miranda, therefore, never treats beggars with disregard and aversion, but she imitates the kindness of our Savior and his apostles. Though she cannot work miracles for their relief, yet she relieves them with the power which she has." William Law

  "It may be," says Miranda, "That I may often give to those who do not deserve it, or who will make an ill use of my alms. But what then? Is not this the very method of divine goodness? Does not God make his sun to rise on the evil and the good? Do I not beg of God to deal with me according to his own great goodness rather than according to my merit? Shall I then, be so absurd as to withhold my charity from a poor brother because he may not deserve it? Shall I use a measure toward him which I pray God never to use toward me?"                 William Law from "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life." A must read. 

Freedom

  "I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect; I call that mind free which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few..... which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world. William Ellery Channing. 

  The following two posts are from Robert Louis Stevenson's book, Viginibus Puerisque, which means young women and men. No doubt there is some cynicism in both, but also some truth.

  "The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage is terrifying; bus so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of men are vastly agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the time that one friend will marry and put you to the door; a second accept a situation in China, and become no more to you than a name, a reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter, very laborious to read; a third will take up with some religious crotchet and treat you to sour looks thenceforward. So, in one way or another, life forces men apart and breaks up the goodly fellowships forever. R.L. Stevenson 1880s.

  "In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to everything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; today "his first duty is to his family," and is fulfilled in large measure by laying down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent. Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without constraint; you will not wake him." 

Although this is a somewhat cynical view of married life, I think there is a lot of truth in it, sadly.... 

  How high have I set my bar?