A Promise (n.) is a thing which those who are most slow in making tend to be the most faithful in performing.
A Promise (n.) from God is made when he gives a creature the idea of a good and makes him feel the need of it.
A Promise (n.) is kept more faithfully the slower it is made, and the harder he finds it to get the promise, the easier it will be to keep.
A Promise (n.) made by a child for tomorrow is nothing: he would promise to throw himself out of the window to escape a whipping today.
A Promise (n.) is learnt from a dark windowless room: the window-breaker who bargains his way out discovers he has hewn the cell in which his own knowledge will imprison him.