O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other's goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obeyed, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. [ Denham ]

Nature forces on our heart a Creator; history, a Providence. [ Jean Paul ]

Public opinion is the atmosphere of Society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms. [ W. R. Alger ]

Government is the greatest combination of forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined. [ D. D. Field ]

Discouragement is a passion, the most dangerous of all: it takes from us all our arms, all our forces, and abandons us without pity to the snares of voluptuousness. [ Alfred Mercier ]

A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile, often frightens away a prude; but, when real danger forces the former to flee, the latter does not hesitate to advance. [ Latena ]

There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. [ Lowell ]

After the sleep of death we are to gather up our forces again with the incalculable results of this life, a crown of shame or glory upon our heads, and begin again on a new level of progress. [ Hugh R. Haweis ]

He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. [ John Foster ]

Melancholy, or low spirits, is that hysterical passion which forces unbidden sighs and tears; it falls upon a contented life, like a drop of ink on white paper, which is not the less a stain that it carries no meaning with it. [ Sir W. Scott ]

Perfect friendship puts us under the necessity of being virtuous; as it can only be preserved among esteemable persons, it forces us to resemble them; you find in friendship the surety of good counsel, the emulation of good example, sympathy in our griefs, and succor in our distress. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. [ Theodore Parker ]

A miracle is a supernatural event, whose antecedent forces are beyond our finite vision, whose design is the display of almighty power for the accomplishment of almighty purposes, and whose immediate result, as regards man, is his recognition of God as the Supreme Ruler of all things, and of His will as the only supreme law. [ A. E. Kittredge ]