Where is Polonius? HAMLET In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most? That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain? That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?
Virtue, opening heaven to those who do not deserve to die, makes her course by paths untried.
[Lat., Virtus, recludens immeritis mori
Coelum, negata tentat iter via.]
Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth . . . will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour.
To be constantly without desire is the way to have a vision of the mystery of heaven and earth. For constantly to have desire is the means by which their limitations are seen.
I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy, Vexing its own creation.
And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.
True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.
It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin then?
Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.