ISAAC WATTS

Learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks.

I would not change my blest estate for all the world calls good or great.

Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.

Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.

Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance.

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.

For Satan always finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain, you have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.

How many thousands pronounce boldly on the affairs of the public whom God nor men never qualified for such judgment?

When general observations are drawn from so many particulars as to become certain and indisputable, these are jewels of knowledge.

What's amiss I'll strive to mend,And endure what can't be mended.

He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove, the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love.

I have been there, and still would go; 'T is like a little heaven below.

There's no repentance in the grave.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come / Let earth receive her King / Let every heart, prepare him room / And heaven and nature sing.

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small: Love so amazing, so divine Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest.

It is not to be expected that we should love God supremely if we have not known him to be more desirable than all other things.

Among all the accomplishments of youth there is none preferable to a decent and agreeable behavior among men, a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good-humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of human life.

A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does.