Sensual pleasures are like soap bubbles, sparkling, effervescent. The pleasures of intellect are calm, beautiful, sublime, ever enduring and climbing upward to the borders of the unseen world.

God brings men [and women] into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse [teach and improve] them. [It is fair and appropriate to get excited about what those lessons and improvements to you will mean for the future happiness of you and those you care about.]

The most generous and merciful in judgment upon the faults of others are always the most free from faults themselves.

God strikes not as an enemy, to destroy but as a father, to correct.

Nothing is eternal but that which is done for God and others. That which is done for self dies.