RELIGION REPENTANCE
Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.
What religion is he of?
Why, he is an Anythingarian.
Swift—Polite Conversation. Dialogue I.
He made it a part of his religion, never to say
grace to his meat.
Swift—Tale of a Tub. Sec. XI.
We have enough religion to make us hate, but
not enough to make us love one another.
Swift—Thoughts on Various Subjects. Collected by Pope and Swot. Found in Spectator
No. 459.
Honour your parents; worship the gods; hurt
not animals.
Triptolbmus, according to Plutarch. From
his traditional laws or precepts.
Once I journeyd far from home
To the gate of holy Rome;
There the Pope, for my offence,
Bade me straight, in penance, thence
Wandering onward, to attain
The wondrous land that height Cokaigne.
Robert Wage—The Land of Cokaigne.
When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.
Watts—Songs and Hymns. Bk. II. No. 65.
The world has a thousand creeds, and never a
one have I;
Nor church of my own, though a million spires
are pointing the way on high.
But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me
along like a river;
And the lamp of my soul is alight with love, for
life, and the world, and the Giver.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—Heresy.
So many gods, so many creeds—
So many paths that wind and wind
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—The World's Need.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his Grace than Gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a Religious Book or Friend.
Sir Henry Wotton—The Character of a
Happy Life. St. 5.
li
Religion's all. Descending from the skies
To wretched man, the goddess in her left
Holds out this world, and, in her right, the next.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night IV. L. 550.
But if man loses all, when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought),
Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night VII. L. 199.
REMORSE
Cruel Remorse! where Youth and Pleasure sport,
And thoughtless Folly keeps her court,—
Crouching 'midst rosy bowers thou lurk'st unseen
Slumbering the festal hours away,
While Youth disports in that enchanting scene;
Till on some fated day
Thou with a tiger-spring dost leap upon thy prey,
And tear his helpless breast, o'erwhelmed with wild dismay.
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows;
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost,
Weeps only tears of poison.
Coleridge—Remorse. Act I. Sc. 1.
Man, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin.
Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within.
Juvenaij—Satires. Satire XIII. L. 1. Wu.
Gdtord's trans.
Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou mv good.
| author = Milton
| work = Paradise Lost.
| place = Bk. IV. L. 108.
Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospere et s'aigrit dans 1'adversitiS.
Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous
period and wakes up in adversity.
| author = Rousseau
| work = Confessions. I. II.
High minds, of native pride and force,
Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse;
Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have,
Thou art the torturer of the brave!
Scott—Marmion. Canto III. St. 13.
Abandon all remorse;
On horror's head horrors accumulate.
Othello. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 369.
REPENTANCE
O ye powers that search
The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts,
If I have done amiss, impute it not!
The best may err, but you are good.
| author = Addison
| work = -Cato. Act V. Sc. 4.
D'uomo 6 il fallir, ma dal malvagio il buono
Scerne il dolor del fallo.
To err is human; but contrition felt for the
crime distinguishes the virtuous from the
wicked.
Alfieri—Rosmunda. III. 1.
To sigh, yet not recede; to grieve, yet not repent!
Crabbe—Tales of the Hall. Bk. III. Boys at
School. Last line.
