"The writer of this legend then recordsIts ghostly application in these words:The image is the Adversary old,Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;Our lusts and passions are the downward stairThat leads the soul from a diviner air;The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;The knights and ladies all whose flesh and boneBy avarice have been hardened into stone;The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelfTempts from his books and from his nobler self.The scholar and the world! The endless strife,The discord in the harmonies of life!The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books;The market-place, the eager love of gain,Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!"
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"The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive."

"And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven."

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him."

"Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are."

"Satan is never your well-wisher. Get the pleasure of making him annoyed on you by doing good deeds."

"Life is indeed terribly complicated-to a man who has lost his principles."

"How come when mortals want things, their only option is to make a deal with Hell and sell their soul? Why can't they make deals with God in exchange for good behavior?"It was another of those rare moments when I'd surprised Carter. I waited for the glib answer I'd mentioned to Seth, something along the lines of goodness being its own reward. The angel considered for several seconds. "Humans make those deals all the time," he said finally. "They just don't make them with God.""Then who are they making them with?" I exclaimed."Themselves."

"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn."
Explore more quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts."

"For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."
