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The heavens are not the less constant because they move continually, because they move continually the same way.
The earth is not the more constant because it lies still continually, because continually it changes and melts in all its parts.
Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts as if he were made not of earth but of snow. His own envy melts him, he grows lean with that.
He will say anothers beauty melts him. But he feels that a fever does not melt him like snow but powers him out like lead, like iron, like brass melted in a furnace. Fever not only melts him but calcines him, reduces him to atoms and to ashes, not to water but to lime.
And how quickly? Sooner than you can receive an answer, sooner than you can conceive the question.
Earth is the centre of my body, Heaven is the centre of my soul.
My body falls down without pushing, my soul does not go up without pulling. Ascension is my souls pace and measure, but precipitation my bodys.
Even Angels, whose home is Heaven and who have wings too, had a ladder to go to heaven by steps.
The sun goes many miles in a minute, the stars of the firmament go even quicker. Neither goes as fast as my body falls to the earth. From the first moment that I feel ill I feel the disease will win.
In the twinkling of an eye I can barely see. Taste is insipid and fatuous, appetite is dull and desireless.
My knees are sinking and strengthless.
And in an instant sleep, which is the picture, the copy of death, is taken away.
Death itself may succeed so that I might have death to the life
It was part of Adams punishment: In the sweat of thy brows thou shalt eat thy bread.
My punishment is even greater. I have earned bread by the sweat of my brows in the labour of my calling, and I have it. Now I sweat again and again, from the brow to the sole of the foot, but I cannot eat bread, I taste no sustenance
Miserable distribution of mankind, where one half lacks meat and the other stomach
