“How often a person, having inclined his ears to the holy verses, would bow down in humility and would embrace the Truth, while his leader would not do so. Thus every individual must bear his own responsibility, rather than someone else bearing it for him.”

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

“Perhaps his love for her made him less than impartial, but he also knew how deeply she'd been hurt and chided her for judging herself so much more harshly than she would have judged someone else…”

David Weber (1952) author

“I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

“If washed in Jesus' blood,
Then bear His likeness too,
And as you onward press
Ask, "What would Jesus do?"”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

“[T]o require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

“His bow, a light burden for glad shoulders, the boy Hylas bears.”
Tela puer facilesque umeris gaudentibus arcus gestat Hylas.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

“Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing. We know how the Lord Jesus became fruitful – not by bearing His Cross merely, but by dying on it. Do we know much of fellowship with Him in this?”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

“This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setteth at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.
And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more, — I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would, and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it. And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might. And verily the number passed mine understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it. And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seemeth Him but little in regard of His love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress