I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn-for example, to find a pot of buried gold-knowing that it brings with it new responsibility. I do not wish more external goods,―neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent, the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard: "Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain, I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." -COMPENSATION It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." -HEROISM He has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the House of Pain. As the salt sea covers more than two-thirds of the surface of the globe, so sorrow encroaches in man on felicity. + -THE TRAGIC We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of Nature is an immortal youth. -SPIRITUAL LAWS To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. -EXPERIENCE The democrat is a young conservative; the conserva tive is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,-because both parties stand on the one ground of supreme value of property, which one endeavours to get, and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of this party, its youth and its age—yes, and with poetic justice, its fate, in his own. -NAPOLEON Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. + -MANNERS Friendship buys friendship; justice, justice; military merit, military success. Good husbandry finds wife, children, and household. The good merchant large gains, ships, stocks, and money. The good poet fame, and literary credit; but not either the other. -WEALTH The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbours, I can get love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. + -COMPENSATION Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. -ADDRESS TO CLASS IN DIVINITY COLLEGE The first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but bad is sometimes a better.. Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passion, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. Not Antoninus, but a poor washerwoman said: "The more trouble, the more lion; that's my principle.' + -COMPENSATION Thoughts let us into realities. Neither miracle, nor magic, nor any religious tradition, not the immortality of the private soul, is incredible, after we have experienced an insight, a thought. + -INSPIRATION The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. + -COMPENSATION The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleetings of cattle. -DEMONOLOGY If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me,-neither better nor worse. -IMMORTALITY These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary 'decree of God,' but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the Soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of Cause and Effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. -THE OVER-SOUL If a man can cut such a head on his stone gate-post as shall draw and keep a crowd about it all day, by its beauty, good nature, and inscrutable meaning-if a man can build a plain cottage with such symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage of Nature that all her powers serve him; making use of geometry instead of expense; tapping a mountain for his waterjet; causing the sun and moon to seem only the decorations of his estate;— this is still the legitimate dominion of Beauty. -BEAUTY The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched. the chambers and magazines of the Soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. + -THE OVER-SOUL There is always room for the man of force. . . . A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. the possible houses and farms. as fast as the sun breeds clouds. The strong man sees His eye makes estates, -POWER The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy-he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. + -POLITICS The youth puts off the illusions of the child, the man puts off the ignorance and tumultuous passions of youth; proceeding thence puts off the egotism of manhood, and becomes at last a public and universal soul. He is rising to greater heights, but also rising to realities; the outer relations and circumstances dying out, he entering deeper into God, God into him, until the last garment of egotism falls, and he is with God, shares the will and the immensity of the First Cause. -IMMORTALITY You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end. -INTELLECT To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,— that is Genius. -SELF-RELIANCE We cannot describe the natural history of the Soul but we know that it is divine. -THE METHOD OF NATURE |