“INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"”

“"Jubal," the face said, "I am thy loved Past,
The soul that makes thee one from first to last.
I am the angel of thy life and death,
Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath.
Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride
Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

“In those days I, Virgil, was nursed of sweet Parthenope, and rejoiced in the arts of inglorious ease.”
Illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti.

Virgil Georgics

“Did I bid thee
Mock, and forget me for thy friend — I say not,
King? Is thy heart so light and lean a thing,
So loose in faith and faint in love? I bade thee
Stand to me, help me, hold my hand in thine
And give my heart back answer. This it is,
Old friend and fool, that gnaws my life in twain —
The worm that writhes and feeds about my heart —
The devil and God are crying in either ear
One murderous word for ever, night and day,
Dark day and deadly night and deadly day,
Can she love thee who slewest her father? I
Love her.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

“If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

“I Love The Happiness Of My Devotee. That Happiness Is (Itself) The Very (And Most Prior) Consciousness Of every conditionally Manifested being. And Happiness (Itself) Is The Conscious Light Of the world. I Am Happiness (or Love-Bliss) Itself.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

“Hence, in Thee, who art Love, the lover -is not one thing and the loved another, and the bond between them a third, but they are one and the same-Thou, Thyself, my God. Since, then, in Thee the loved is one with the lover, and being loved [is one] with loving, this bond of coincidence is an essential bond. For there is nothing in Thee that is not Thy very Essence.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

“Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,
Loose types of things through all degrees.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do — for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

“Every one that flatters thee
Is no friends in misery.
Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
Every man will be thy friend
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.”

Richard Barnfield (1574–1627) English poet