“The thick baffling blades of false world customs rip off my views and ideas,like breaking every string of my aesthetic thoughts in disdain and jealousy;pain pain enough your tigrine roars before I die.”

“Ah! listen the song of storm from my disturbed soul;and it scatters flower buds into its lonely halls;like every pain needs a dirge,with wreaths that awful the world framed one for me,and gives the time it calls.”

“There at the cross, we see all pain and darkness conquered in such a way that it is defeated forever. Not by disregarding it. Not by denying it. But by giving value even to our tears. By loving everything about us, including our very worst hurts.”

“How do you wipe away pain? You don’t. You put in tenderness, compassion and joy. You cling to hope and then you offer everything to God. And you wait, with faith you see all things anew – light shines out from darkness, happiness grows through every pain, and all things become indeed so very beautiful in His time.”

“As thou know not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou know not the works of what makes all.”

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

“The greatest futility! says the congregator, “The greatest futility! Everything is futile!” What does a person gain from all his hard work- At which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and another cometh forth, but the earth remains the same.”

“When was it that they who dwell upon the earth have not sinned in thy sight? or what people have so kept thy commandments? Thou shall find that you all by name had kept thy precepts; but not the heathen.”

“And yet their reward appear not, and their labor had no fruit: for I have gone here and there through the heathen, and I see that they flow in wealth, and think not upon thy commandments.”

“These be they that have put off the mortal clothing, and put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God: now are they crowned, and receive palms.”

“Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. And all that cometh is vanity.”