"Certainly it is not those who are busiest who are best employed. Two of the most useful people in the world that I know are people of leisure. One is an elderly lady who lives in the country and has no particular duties. But she is a woman of great intellectual force, with a poetical and deeply religious mind. The result is that every one who is brought into contact with her goes away with a heightened sense of the significance and interest of life. She is always ready to consider other people's problems, and does it with a zest and sympathy that make it a pleasure to consult her. The result is that she holds the threads of many lives in her hands. You leave her presence feeling that your own existence is an infinitely beautiful and important thing; she kindles one with a desire to act worthily."    Arthur Benson. 

  "Let us admit that the outward life has for some time now tyrannized over us; excessively invading our private habits; narrowing our modes of thought and sentiment; benumbing the consciousness of our spiritual nature; and impairing the reality of God. Let us admit that the Divine Spirit is gone into distance and strangeness from us, and is hard to reach; that solitude brings no unspeakable converse with God, no ready consecration; that the senses and the understanding seem nearer to us than those that touch the soul; that the crowd and noise are too close and constant on us, confusing our better perceptions, and leading us always to look around, but seldom to look up; that the glare of the lamps has destroyed the midnight and put out the stars; God asleep, and heaven only a murmur from our dreams."  James Martineau.

 "Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned." Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.

 "Our temptations are chiefly inward, because they find good entertainment in us; our disposition being like a mutinous city that is not only sieged with strong enemies without, but with false traitors within, ready to betray it." Taylor.

  When Secretary Walsingham arrived at retirement age, he retired to the country to spend his days in quiet. Some of his former companions came to see him, and tried to cheer him in his melancholy. He answered, "No, I am not melancholy, but I am serious; and it is very proper that we should be so! Ah, my friends, while we laugh everything is serious about us. God is serious, who exercises his patience towards us; Christ is serious, who shed his atoning blood for us; the Holy Ghost is serious, who strives against the stubbornness of our hearts; the Holy Scriptures are serious books; they present to our thoughts the most serious concerns in all the world; the holy sacraments represent very serious and awful matters; the whole creation is serious in serving God and us; all in heaven are serous. How then can we be merry and trifling?"

  "There are days, perhaps it is well that they are not more common, when by some singular harmony of body and spirit, every little sound and sight strikes on the senses with a peculiar sharpness and distinctness of quality, has a keen and racy savor, and comes delightfully home to the mind as cool well water to thirsty lips.

Everything seems in place, in some well designed combination or symphony of the senses, and more than that: the sound, the sight, whatever it be, sets free a whole train of far-reaching and mysterious thoughts, that seem to flash the secret of life on the spirit; or rather, hint it in a tender, smiling way, as a mother nods a delighted acquiescence to the eager questions of a child face to face with some happy surprise." Arthur Benson.