It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine, ii. xi (1650)
Quotations by:
Fuller, Thomas (1608)
Lord, before I commit a sin, it seems to me so shallow that I may wade through it dry-shod from any guiltiness; but when I have committed it, it often seems so deep that I cannot escape without drowning.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
Good Thoughts in Bad Times, “Personal Meditations,” VII (1659)
Full text.
Good is not good, where better is expected.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
The Church-History of Britain (1655)
And know, reader, that an ounce of mirth, with the same degree of grace, will serve God farther than a pound of sadness.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
The History of the Worthies of England, “Worthies of Hertfordshire,” “Writers” (1662)
(Source)
Writing of Jeremiah Dike. By the late 19th Century, Fuller's comment had been paraphrased into something simpler, though still attributed to him:
An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.
[Source 1872, 1895, 1867]
This sentiment is not unique to Fuller. In Richard Baxter's A Treatise of Self-Denial (1659), in "A Dialog of Self-Denial" between Flesh and Spirit, Flesh says:
Why should I think of what will be tomorrow?
An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow.
The second line here may have been a common English aphorism prior to Fuller and Baxter.
He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) English churchman, historian
The Holy State and the Profane State, Book 3, ch. 3 “Of Self-Praising” (1642)
(Source)