To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness. – Thomas Traherne
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child. – Thomas Traherne
Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Fathers palace and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels. – Thomas Traherne
Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy nor fear them. – Thomas Traherne
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. – Nathaniel Hawthorne