There are people who have an appetite for grief, pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain, mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can soothe their ragged and dishevelled desolation. They mis-hear and mis-behold, they suspect and dread. They handle every nettle and ivy in the hedge, and tread on every snake in the meadow. + -THE TRAGIC "What we know is a point to what we do not know.” The first questions are still to be asked. Let any man bestow a thought on himself, how he came hither, and whither he tends, and he will find that all the literature, all the philosophy that is on record, have done little to dull the edge of inquiry. The globe that swims so silently with us through the sea of space, has never a port, but with its little convoy of friendly orbs, pursues its voyage through the signs of heaven, to renew its navigation again forever. The wonderful tidings our glasses and calendars give us concerning the hospitable lights that hang around us in the deep, do not appease but inflame our curiosity; and in like manner, our culture does not lead to any goal, but its richest results of thought and action are only new preparation. -THE SENSES AND THE SOUL + Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him. Character and wit have their own magnetism. Send a deep man into any town, and he will find another deep man there, unknown hitherto to his neighbours. That is the great happiness of life, to add to our high acquaintances. -- SUCCESS The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,-the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love of what is simple and beautiful; independence, and cheerful relation-these are the essentials, these, and the wish to serve,-to add somewhat to the wellbeing of men. -COMPENSATIONS BY THE WAY The ancients are only venerable to us because distance has destroyed what was trivial; as the sun and stars affect us only grandly, because we cannot reach to their smoke and surfaces and say, Is that all? -CARLYLE'S "PAST AND PRESENT" + A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passing of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation of alarm? No man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first time. + But, laying hands on another -HISTORY -BOSTON HYMN Talent amuses; Wisdom instructs. Talent shows me what another man can do; Genius acquaints me with the spacious circuits of the common nature. One is carpentry; the other is growth. To make a step into the world of thought is now given to but few men; to make a second step beyond the first, only one in a century can do; but to carry the thought on to three steps, marks a great teacher. -THE SENSES AND THE SOUL + Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; and posterity seems to follow his steps as a train of clients. -SELF-RELIANCE You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. + -COMPENSATION Money is of no value; it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill of the spender. -THE YOUNG AMERICAN A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. All his faculties refer to natures out of him. All his faculties predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose a medium like air. Insulate, and you destroy him. He cannot live without a world. Put Napoleon in an island-prison, let his faculties find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, and he would beat the air and appear stupid. + -HISTORY A youth marries in haste; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should have much to say,' he might reply, if the question were open, but I have a wife and children, and all question is closed for me.' + -ENGLISH TRAITS The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is Art. From the first imitative babble of a child to the despotism of eloquence, from his first pile of toys or chip bridge to the masonry of Minot Rock Lighthouse or the Pacific Railroad, from the tattooing of the Owhyhees to the Vatican Gallery, from the simplest expedient of private prudence to the American Constitution, from its first to its last works, Art is the spirit's voluntary use and combination of things to serve its end. -ART great, is great. The soul's -SPIRITUAL LAWS Our painful labours are very unnecessary, and altogether fruitless. Only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love,a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a Soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice; and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. Prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any sincerity, must screw himself up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, and so stoutness will commonly make his fear groundless. It + -PRUDENCE was high counsel that Jones heard given to a young person,-"Always do what you are afraid to do." + -HEROISM Our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night always bear some proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are only exaggerations of the sins of the day. "My children," said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, “my children, you will never see anything worse than yourselves." -SPIRITUAL LAWS |