Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin. Would you then be fitted for afflictions? Be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then what affliction soever you may meet with will be very easy to you. – John Bunyan
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. – Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere. – Rebecca West