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The Ash Her Purple Drops Forgivingly And Sadly, Breaking Not The General Hush; The Maple Swamps Glow Like A Sunset Sea, Each Leaf A Ripple With Its Separate Flush; All Round The Wood's Edge Creeps The Skirting Blaze, Ere The Rain Falls, The Cautious Farmer Burns His Brush.

-James Russell Lowell

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The Ash Her Purple

James Russell Lowell

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The Ash Her Purple Drops Forgivingly And Sadly, Breaking Not The General Hush; The Maple Swamps Glow Like A Sunset Sea, Each Leaf A Ripple With Its Separate Flush; All Round The Wood's Edge Creeps The Skirting Blaze, Ere The Rain Falls, The Cautious Farmer Burns His Brush.

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A Great Man Is Made Up Of Qualities That Meet Or Make Great Occasions.

Laborin' Man An' Laborin' Woman Hev One Glory An' One Shame; Ev'y Thin' Thet' S Done Inhuman Injers All On 'em The Same.

If The Devil Take A Less Hateful Shape To Us Than To Our Fathers, He Is As Busy With Us As With Them.

Analysis Is Carried Into Everything. Even Deity Is Subjected To Chemical Tests.

No Man, I Suspect, Ever Lived Long In The Country Without Being Bitten By These Meteorological Ambitions. He Likes To Be Hotter And Colder, To Have Been More Deeply Snowed Up, To Have More Trees And Larger Blown Down Than His Neighbors.

The Question Of Common Sense Is Always: 'what Is It Good For?' - A Question Which Would Abolish The Rose And Be Answered Triumphantly By The Cabbage.

Who Knows Whither The Clouds Have Fled? In The Unscarred Heaven They Leave No Wake; And The Eyes Forget The Tears They Have Shed, The Heart Forgets Its Sorrow And Ache.

The Material Of Thought Re-acts Upon The Thought Itself.

Not A Change For The Better In Our Human Housekeeping Has Ever Taken Place That Wise And Good Men Have Not Opposed It-have Not Prophesied That The World Would Wake Up To Find Its Throat Cut In Consequence.

Fastidiousness Is Only Another Word For Egotism; And All Men Who Know Not Where To Look For Truth Save In The Narrow Well Of Self Will Find Their Own Image At The Bottom, And Mistake It For What They Are Seeking.

O Reputation! Dearer Far Than Life.

O Chime Of Sweet Saint Charity, Peal Soon That Easter Morn When Christ For All Shall Risen Be, And In All Hearts New-born! That Pentecost When Utterance Clear To All Men Shall Be Given, When All Shall Say My Brother Here, And Hear My Son In Heaven!

The Intellect Has Only One Failing, Which, To Be Sure, Is A Very Considerable One. It Has No Conscience.

If I Were Asked What Book Is Better Than A Cheap Book, I Should Answer That There Is One Book Better Than A Cheap Book, - And That Is A Book Honestly Come By.

Greatly Begin. Though Thou Have Time, But For A Line, Be That Sublime. Not Failure, But Low Aim Is Crime.

My Gran'ther's Rule Was Safer 'n 't Is To Crow: Don't Never Prophesy - Onless Ye Know.

Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past.

The Secret Of Force In Writing Lies Not So Much In The Pedigree Of Nouns And Adjectives And Verbs, As In Having Something That You Believe In To Say, And Making The Parts Of Speech Vividly Conscious Of It.

In All Literary History There Is No Such Figure As Dante, No Such Homogeneousness Of Life And Works, Such Loyalty To Ideas, Such Sublime Irrecognition Of The Unessential.

Truth Forever On The Scaffold, Wrong Forever On The Throne.

Folks Never Understand The Folks They Hate.

Wut 's Words To Them Whose Faith An' Truth On War's Red Techstone Rang True Metal; Who Ventered Life An' Love An' Youth For The Gret Prize O' Death In Battle?

All That Hath Been Majestical In Life Or Death, Since Time Began, Is Native In The Simple Heart Of All, The Angel Heat Of Man.

God's Livery Is A Very Plain One; But Its Wearers Have Good Reason To Be Content. If It Have Not So Much Gold-lace About It As Satan's, It Keeps Out Foul Weather Better, And Is Besides A Great Deal Cheaper.

What Men Call Luck Is The Prerogative Of Valiant Souls, The Fealty Life Pays Its Rightful Kings.

The Flowers Or Weeds That Spring Up Tomorrow Are In The Seeds We Sow Today. The Foolish And The Dead Alone Never Change Their Opinions.

A Poet Must Need Be Before His Own Age, To Be Even With Posterity

I Willingly Confess To So Great A Partiality For Trees As Tempts Me To Respect A Man In Exact Proportion To His Respect For Them.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof; It Is Temporary Expedient, Often Wise In Party Politics, Almost Sure To Be Unwise In Statesmanship.

Thank God Every Morning When You Get Up That You Have Something To Do That Day, Which Must Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not.

The Better Part Of Every Man's Education Is That Which He Gives Himself.

Stories Now, To Suit A Public Taste, Must Be Half Epigram, Half Pleasant Vice.

Good Luck Is The Willing Handmaid Of Upright, Energetic Character, And Conscientious Observance Of Duty.

I Who Still Pray At Morning And At Eve Thrice In My Life Perhaps Have Truly Prayed, Thrice Stirred Below Conscious Self Have Felt That Perfect Disenthrallment Which Is God.

Earth's Biggest Country 's Gut Her Soul, An' Risen Up Earth's Greatest Nation.

As One Lamp Lights Another, Nor Grows Less,so Nobleness Enkindleth Nobleness.

Tiny Salmoneus Of The Air His Mimic Bolts The Firefly Threw.

The Thing We Long For, That We Are For One Transcendent Moment.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us; The Beggar Is Taxed For A Corner To Die In, The Priest Hath His Fee Who Comes And Shrives Us, We Bargain For The Graves We Lie In; Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold... 't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away, 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking; There Is No Price Set On The Lavish Summer, And June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

Human Nature Has A Much Greater Genius For Sameness Than For Originality.

We Kind O' Thought Christ Went Agin War An' Pillage.

The Rich Man's Sons Inherits Cares; The Bank May Break, The Factory Burn, A Breath May Burst His Bubble Shares, And Soft, White Hands Could Hardly Earn A Living That Would Serve His Turn.

Men! Whose Boast It Is That Ye Come Of Fathers Brave And Free, If There Breathe On Earth A Slave, Are Ye Truly Free And Brave?

These Pearls Of Thought In Persian Gulfs Were Bred, Each Softly Lucent As A Rounded Moon; The Diver Omar Plucked Them From Their Bed, Fitzgerald Strung Them On An English Thread.

A Weed Is No More Than A Flower In Disguise, Which Is Seen Through At Once, If Love Give A Man Eyes.

God Does Not Weigh Criminality In Our Scales. We Have One Absolute, With The Seal Of Authority Upon It; And With Us An Ounce Is An Ounce, And A Pound A Pound. God's Measure Is The Heart Of The Offender,--a Balance Which Varies With Every One Of Us, A Balance So Delicate That A Tear Cast In The Other Side May Make The Weight Of Error Kick The Beam.

The Quiet Tenderness Of Chaucer, Where You Almost Seem To Hear The Hot Tears Falling, And The Simple Choking Words Sobbed Out.

The Soil Out Of Which Such Men As He Are Made Is Good To Be Born On, Good To Live On, Good To Die For And To Be Buried In.

There Is Nothing So Desperately Monotonous As The Sea, And I No Longer Wonder At The Cruelty Of Pirates.

The Time Is Ripe, And Rotten-ripe, For Change.

The Very Gnarliest And Hardest Of Hearts Has Some Musical Strings In It; But They Are Tuned Differently In Every One Of Us.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof.

Comparative Criticism Teaches Us That Moral And Aesthetic Defects Are More Nearly Related Than Is Commonly Supposed.

With Every Anguish Of Our Earthly Part The Spirit's Sight Grows Clearer.

There Is No Self-delusion More Fatal Than That Which Makes The Conscience Dreamy With The Anodyne Of Lofty Sentiments, While The Life Is Groveling And Sensual

A Nature Wise With Finding In Itself The Types Of All, With Watching From The Dim Verge Of The Time What Things To Be Are Visible In The Gleams Thrown Forward On Them From The Luminous Past, Wise With The History Of Its Own Frail Heart, With Reverence And Sorrow, And With Love, Broad As The World, For Freedom And For Man.

In Creating, The Only Hard Thing Is To Begin: A Grass Blade's No Easier To Make Than An Oak.

I Tell Ye Wut, My Judgment Is You're Pooty Sure To Fail, Ez Long 'z The Head Keeps Turnin' Back For Counsel To The The Tail.

Many Make The Household But Only One The Home.

Truth Only Needs To Be For Once Spoken Out; And There's Such Music In Her, Such Strange Rhythm, As Makes Men's Memories Her Joyous Slaves.

There Is Something Magnificent In Having A Country To Love.

If God Made Poets For Anything, It Was To Keep Alive The Traditions Of The Pure, The Holy, And The Beautiful.

It Is Only The Intellect That Can Be Thoroughly And Hideously Wicked. It Can Forget Everything In The Attainment Of Its Ends. The Heart Recoils; In Its Retired Some Drops Of Childhood's Dew Still Linger, Defying Manhood's Fiery Noon.

Forget Everything

The Pine Is The Mother Of Legends.

To Me It Seems Not Unreasonable To Find A Re-enforcement Of Optimism, A Renewal Of Courage And Hope, In The Modern Theory That Man Has Mounted To What He Is From The Lowest Step Of Potentiality, Through Toilsome Grades Of Ever-expanding Existence, Even Thought It Have Been By A Spiral Stairway, Mainly Dark Or Dusty, With Loop-holes At Long Intervals Only, And These Granting But A Narrow And One-sided View.

The Ash Her Purple Drops Forgivingly And Sadly, Breaking Not The General Hush; The Maple Swamps Glow Like A Sunset Sea, Each Leaf A Ripple With Its Separate Flush; All Round The Wood's Edge Creeps The Skirting Blaze, Ere The Rain Falls, The Cautious Farmer Burns His Brush.

A Word Once Vulgarized Can Never Be Rehabilitated.

The Brain Can Be Easy To Buy, But The Heart Never Comes To Market.

Where Church And State Are Habitually Associated, It Is Natural That Minds, Even Of A High Order, Should Unconsciously Come To Regard Religion As Only A Subtler Mode Of Police.

There Is No Good In Arguing With The Inevitable. The Only Argument Available With An East Wind Is To Put On Your Overcoat.

Fools, When Their Roof-tree Falls, Think It Doomsday.

It Is The Vain Endeavor To Make Ourselves What We Are Not That Has Strewn History With So Many Broken Purposes And Lives Left In The Rough.

A Wise Man Travels To Discover Himself.

Now The Heart Is So Full That A Drop Overfills It, We Are Happy Now Because God So Wills It; No Matter How Barren The Past May Have Been, 't Is Enough For Us Now That The Leaves Are Green; We Sit In The Warm Shade And Feel Right Well How The Sap Creeps Up And The Blossoms Swell... The Breeze Comes Whispering In Our Ear, That Dandelions Are Blossoming Near... Every Thing Is Upward Striving; 't Is As Easy Now For The Heart To Be True As For Grass To Be Green Or Skies To Be Blue, - 't Is The Natural Way Of Living.

The Realm Of Death Seems An Enemy's Country To Most Men, On Whose Shores They Are Loathly Driven By Stress Of Weather; To The Wise Man It Is The Desired Port Where He Moors His Bark Gladly, As In Some Quiet Haven Of The Fortunate Isles; It Is The Golden West Into Which His Sun Sinks, And, Sinking, Casts Back A Glory Upon The Leaden Cloud-tack Which Had Darkly Besieged His Day.

The Holy Supper Is Kept, Indeed, In Whatso We Share With Anothers Need; Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare; Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor, And Me.

In Life's Small Things Be Resolute And Great To Keep Thy Muscle Trained; Know'st Thou When Fate Thy Measure Takes, Or When She'll Say To Thee, "i Find Thee Worthy; Do This Deed For Me?"

The Future Works Out Great Men's Destinies; The Present Is Enough For Common Souls, Who, Never Looking Forward, Are Indeed Mere Clay Wherein The Footprints Of Their Age Are Petrified Forever.

If We See Light At The End Of The Tunnel, It's The Light Of The Oncoming Train.

All Free Governments, Whatever Their Name, Are In Reality Governments By Public Opinion ; And It Is On The Quality Of This Public Opinion That Their Prosperity Depends. It Is, Therefore, Their First Duty To Purify The Element From Which They Draw The Breath Of Life.

What Men Prize Most Is A Privilege, Even If It Be That Of Chief Mourner At A Funeral.

And I Honor The Man Who Is Willing To Sink Half His Present Repute For The Freedom To Think, And, When He Has Thought, Be His Cause Strong Or Weak, Will Risk T' Other Half For The Freedom To Speak.

But Civlyzation Doos Git Forrid Sometimes Upon A Powder-cart.

Great Truths Are Portions Of The Soul Of Man; Great Souls Are Portions Of Eternity.

He Gives Only The Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty.

Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People.

All Birds During The Pairing Season Become More Or Less Sentimental, And Murmur Soft Nothings In A Tone Very Unlike The Grinding-organ Repetition And Loudness Of Their Habitual Song. The Crow Is Very Comical As A Lover; And To Hear Him Trying To Soften His Croak To The Proper Saint-preux Standard Has Something The Effect Of A Mississippi Boatman Quoting Tennyson.

The Eye Is The Notebook Of The Poet.

That Best Academy, A Mother's Knee.

All Share In The Government Of The World Was Denied For Centuries To Perhaps The Ablest, Certainly The Most Tenacious Race That Had Ever Lived In It

He's True To God Who's True To Man.

Like Streams That Keep A Summer Mind Snow-hid In Jenooary.

A Profound Common Sense Is The Best Genius For Statesmanship.

The Pressure Of Public Opinion Is Like The Pressure Of The Atmosphere; You Can't See It - But All The Same, It Is Sixteen Pounds To The Square Inch.

A Wise Skepticism Is The First Attribute Of A Good Critic.

Truth, After All, Wears A Different Face To Everybody, And It Would Be Too Tedious To Wait Till All Were Agreed.

Better To Me The Poor Mans Crust, Better The Blessing Of The Poor, Though I Turn Me Empty From His Door; That Is No True Alms Which The Hand Can Hold; He Gives Nothing But Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty; But He Who Gives A Slender Mite, And Gives To That Which Is Out Of Sight, That Thread Of The All-sustaining Beauty Which Runs Through All And Doth All Unite, - The Hand Cannot Clasp The Whole Of His Alms, The Heart Outstretches Its Eager Palms, For A God Goes With It And Makes It Store To The Soul That Was Starving In Darkness Before.

All Thoughts That Mold The Age Begin Deep Down Within The Primitive Soul.

Truth, After All, Wears A Different Face To Everybody, And It Would Be Too Tedious To Wait Till All Were Agreed. She Is Said To Lie At The Bottom Of A Well, For The Very Reason, Perhaps, That Whoever Looks Down In Search Of Her Sees His Own Image At The Bottom, And Is Persuaded Not Only That He Has Seen The Goddess, But That She Is Far Better Looking Than He Had Imagined.

Different Faces

A Woman's Love Is Mighty, But A Mother's Heart Is Weak, And By Its Weakness Overcomes.

Nature, They Say, Doth Dote, And Cannot Make A Man Save On Some Worn-out Plan Repeating Us By Rote: For Him Her Old World Moulds Aside She Threw And, Choosing Sweet Clay From The Breast Of The Unexhausted West, With Stuff Untainted Shaped A Hero New.

Not Only Around Our Infancy Doth Heaven With All Its Splendors Lie; Daily, With Souls That Cringe And Plot, We Sinais Climb And Know It Not.

Virtue Treads Paths That End Not In The Grave.

There Is No Bore We Dread Being Left Alone With So Much As Our Own Minds.

Truly There Is A Tide In The Affairs Of Men; But There Is No Gulf-stream Setting Forever In One Direction.

How I Do Love The Earth. I Feel It Thrill Under My Feet. I Feel Somehow As If It Were Conscious Of My Love, As If Something Passed Into My Dancing Blood From It.

Talent Is That Which Is In A Man's Power; Genius Is That In Whose Power A Man Is.

It Seems To Me That The Bane Of Our Country Is A Profession Of Faith Either With No Basis Of Real Belief, Or With No Proper Examination Of The Grounds On Which The Creed Is Supposed To Rest.

Now On The Hills I Hear The Thunder Mutter... Nearer And Nearer Rolls The Thunder-clap, - You Can Hear The Quick Heart Of The Tempest Beat.... Look! Look! That Livid Flash! And Instantly Follows The Rattling Thunder, As If Some Cloud-crag, Split Asunder, Fell, Splintering With A Ruinous Crash, On The Earth, Which Crouches In Silence Under; And Now A Solid Gray Wall Of Rain Shuts Off The Landscape, Mile By Mile.

Poetry Is Something To Make Us Wiser And Better, By Continually Revealing Those Types Of Beauty And Truth, Which God Has Set In All Men's Souls.

Over Our Manhood Bend The Skies; Against Our Fallen And Traitor Lives The Great Winds Utter Prophecies; With Our Faint Hearts The Mountain Strives, Its Arms Outstretched, The Druid Wood Waits With Its Benedicite And To Our Ages Drowsy Blood Still Shouts The Inspiring Sea.

Sincerity Is Impossible, Unless It Pervade The Whole Being, And The Pretence Of It Saps The Very Foundation Of Character.

Pride Of Origin, Whether High Or Low, Springs From The Same Principle In Human Nature; One Is But The Positive, The Other The Negative, Pole Of A Single Weakness.

Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor And Me.

A Beggar Through The World Am I, From Place To Place I Wander By. Fill Up My Pilgrim's Scrip For Me, For Christ's Sweet Sake And Charity.

At The Devil's Booth Are All Things Sold. Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold.

The Ultimate Result Of Protecting Fools From Their Folly Is To Fill The Planet Full Of Fools.

The Foolish And The Dead Alone Never Change Their Opinions.

There Is No Better Ballast For Keeping The Mind Steady On Its Keel, And Saving It From All Risk Of Crankiness, Than Business.

It Is Good To Lengthen To The Last A Sunny Mood.

As Life Runs On, The Road Grows Strange With Faces New - And Near The End. The Milestones Into Headstones Change, Neath Every One A Friend.

No Man Can Produce Great Things Who Is Not Thoroughly Sincere In Dealing With Himself.

The Mind Can Weave Itself Warmly In The Cocoon Of Its Own Thoughts, And Dwell A Hermit Anywhere.

Scepticism Commonly Takes Up The Room Left By Defect Of Imagination, And Is The Very Quality Of Mind Most Likely To Seek For Sensual Proof Of Supersensual Things. If One Came From The Dead It Could Not Believe; And Yet It Longs For Such A Witness, And Will Put Up With A Very Dubious One.

Old Events Have Modern Meanings; Only That Survives Of Past History Which Finds Kindred In All Hearts And Lives.

It ["the Ancient Mariner"] Is Marvellous In Its Mastery Over That Delightfully Fortuitous Inconsequence That Is The Adamantine Logic Of Dreamland.

Praise Follows Truth Afar Off, And Only Overtakes Her At The Grave; Plausibility Clings To Her Skirts And Holds Her Back Till Then

All Thoughtful Men Are Solitary And Original In Themselves.

Taste Is The Next Gift To Genius.

Those Who Know The Truth Are Not Equal To Those Who Love It Confucius All Truth Is Safe And Nothing Else Is Safe, But He Who Keeps Back Truth, Or Withholds It From Men, From Motives Of Expediency, Is Either A Coward Or A Criminal.

Worshippers Of Light Ancestral Make The Present Light A Crime.

God Is The Only Being Who Has Time Enough; But A Prudent Man, Who Knows How To Seize Occasion, Can Commonly Make A Shift To Find As Much As He Needs.

Stern Men With Empires In Their Brains.

But Better Far It Is To Speak One Simple Word, Which Now And Then Shall Waken Their Free Nature In The Weak And Friendless Sons Of Men.

Ef You Want Peace, The Thing You've Gut To Du Is Jes' To Show You're Up To Fightin', Tu.

A Marciful Providunce Fashioned Us Holler O' Purpose Thet We Might Our Principles Swaller.

Many-sidedness Of Culture Makes Our Vision Clearer And Keener In Particulars.

So We're All Right, An' I, For One, Don't Think Our Cause'll Lose In Vally By Rammin' Scriptur' In Our Gun, An' Gittin' Natur' For An Ally.

Truth Is Quite Beyond The Reach Of Satire. There Is So Brave A Simplicity In Her That She Can No More Be Made Ridiculous Than An Oak Or A Pine.

The Time Is Ripe, And Rotten-ripe, For Change... [truth's] Mirror Is Turned Forward, To Reflect The Promise Of The Future, Not The Past.

Ah, In This World, Where Every Guiding Thread Ends Suddenly In The One Sure Centre, Death, The Visionary Hand Of Might-have-been Alone Can Fill Desire's Cup To The Brim!

All The Beautiful Sentiments In The World Weigh Less Than A Single Lovely Action.

Ez Fer War, I Call It Murder,- There You Hev It Plain An' Flat; I Don't Want To Go No Furder Than My Testyment Fer That. . . . . . An' You 've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

Reading Chaucer Is Like Brushing Through The Dewy Grass At Sunrise.

Evil Is A Far More Cunning And Persevering Propagandist Than Good, For It Has No Inward Strength, And Is Driven To Seek Countenance And Sympathy.

In The Scale Of The Destinies, Brawn Will Never Weigh So Mach As Brain.

For There's Nothing We Read Of In Torture's Inventions, Like A Well-meaning Dunce, With The Best Of Intentions.

The English Puritans Pulled Down Church And State To Rebuild Zion On The Ruins, And All The While It Was Not Zion, But America, They Were Building.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accurst.

May Is A Pious Fraud Of The Almanac.

The New World's Sons From England's Breast We Drew Such Milk As Bids Remember Whence We Came, Proud Of Her Past Wherefrom Our Future Grew, This Window We Inscribe With Raleigh's Fame.

Tyrants Are But The Spawn Of Ignorance, Begotten By The Slaves They Trample On.

The Riches Of Scholarship, The Benignities Of Literature, Defy Fortune And Outlive Calamity. They Are Beyond The Reach Of Thief Or Moth Or Rust. As They Cannot Be Inherited, So They Cannot, Be Alienated.

Life Is A Sheet Of Paper White / Whereon Each One Of Us May Write / His Word Or Two, And Then Comes Night.

And What They Dare To Dream Of, Date To Do.

Two Meanings Have Our Lightest Fantasies,- One Of The Flesh, And Of The Spirit One.

May Is A Pious Fraud Of The Almanac A Ghastly Parody Of Real Spring Shaped Out Of Snow And Breathed With Eastern Wind.

Who Is It Needs Such Flawless Shafts As Fate? What Archer Of His Arrows Is So Choice, Or Hits The White So Surely?

Truth Always Has A Bewitching Savor Of Newness In It, And Novelty At The First Taste Recalls That Original Sweetness To The Tongue; But Alas For Him Who Would Make The One A Substitute For The Other.

A Stray Hair, By Its Continued Irritation, May Give More Annoyance Than A Smart Blow.

Truth Forever On The Scaffold, Wrong Forever On The Throne,- Yet That Scaffold Sways The Future, And, Behind The Dim Unknown, Standeth God Within The Shadow, Keeping Watch Above His Own.

The Pale And Quiet Moon Makes Her Calm Forehead Bare, And The Last Fragments Of The Storm, Like Shattered Rigging From A Fight At Sea, Silent And Few, Are Drifting Over Me.

The Surest Plan To Make A Man Is, Think Him So.

Fanaticism, Or, To Call It By Its Milder Name, Enthusiasm, Is Only Powerful And Active So Long As It Is Aggressive. Establish It Firmly In Power, And It Becomes Conservatism, Whether It Will Or No.

O Thou, Whose Days Are Yet All Spring, Faith, Blighted Once, Is Past Retrieving; Experience Is A Dumb, Dead Thing; The Victory's In Believing.

Democracy Is Nothing More Than An Experiment In Government, More Likely To Succeed In A New Soil, But Likely To Be Tried In All Soils, Which Must Stand Or Fall On Its Own Merits As Others Have Done Before It. For There Is No Trick Of Perpetual Motion In Politics Any More Than In Mechanics.

The Course Of A Great Statesman Resembles That Of Navigable Rivers, Avoiding Immovable Obstacles With Noble Bends Of Concession, Seeking The Broad Levels Of Opinion On Which Men Soonest Settle And Longest Dwell, Following And Marking The Almost Imperceptible Slopes Of National Tendency, Yet Always Aiming At Direct Advances, Always Recruited From Sources Nearer Heaven, And Sometimes Bursting Open Paths Of Progress And Fruitful Human Commerce Through What Seem The Eternal Barriers Of Both.

It Is Beginning To Be Doubtful Whether Parliament And Congress Sit In Westminster And Washington, Or In The Editorial Rooms Of The Leading Journals,--so Thoroughly Is Everything Debated Before The Authorized And Responsible Debaters Get On Their Legs.

No Mud Can Soil Us But The Mud We Throw.

Not A Deed Would He Do, Not A Word Would He Utter, Till He's Weighed Its Relation To Plain Bread And Butter.

Where One Person Shapes Their Life By Precept And Example, There Are A Thousand Who Have Shaped It By Impulse And Circumstances.

Whom The Heart Of Man Shuts Out, Sometimes The Heart Of God Takes In, And Fences Them All Round About With Silence Mid The Worlds Loud Din.

Some Kind Of Pace May Be Got Out Of The Eeriest Jade By The Near Prospect Of Oats; But The Thoroughbred Has The Spur In His Blood.

All God's Angels Come To Us Disguised.

It Is Curious How Tyrannical The Habit Of Reading Is...

They Have Rights Who Dare Maintain Them.

Through Aisles Of Long-drawn Centuries My Spirit Walks In Thought.

Light Is The Symbol Of Truth.

Spiritual Healing

Each Day The World Is Born Anew For Him Who Takes It Rightly.

It Is Not A Great Xerxes Army Of Words, But A Compact Greek Ten Thousand That March Safely Down To Posterity.

The Nunneries Of Silent Nooks, The Murmured Longing Of The Wood.

Hush! Still As Death, The Tempest Holds His Breath As From A Sudden Will; The Rain Stops Short, But From The Eaves You See It Drop, And Hear It From The Leaves, All Is So Bodingly Still.

The Right To Be A Cussed Fool Is Safe From All Devices Human, It's Common (ez A Gin'i Rule) To Every Critter Born Of Woman.

What Visionary Tints The Year Puts On, When Falling Leaves Falter Through Motionless Air Or Numbly Cling And Shiver To Be Gone! How Shimmer The Low Flats And Pastures Bare, As With Her Nectar Hebe Autumn Fills The Bowl Between Me And Those Distant Hills, And Smiles And Shakes Abroad Her Misty, Tremulous Hair!

Time Is, After All, The Greatest Of Poets; And The Sons Of Memory Stand A Better Chance Of Being The Heirs Of Fame.

To Make The Common Marvelous Is The Test Of Genius.

There Is No Work Of Genius Which Has Not Been The Delight Of Mankind, No Word Of Genius To Which The Human Heart And Soul Have Not Sooner Or Later Responded.

The Heart Forgets Its Sorrow And Ache.

Certainly It Is No Shame To A Man That He Should Be As Nice About His Country As His Sweetheart, Yet It Would Not Be Wise To Hold Everyone An Enemy Who Could Not See Her With Our Own Enchanted Eyes.

Wealth May Be An Excellent Thing, For It Means Power, And It Means Leisure, It Means Liberty.

Men Have Their Intellectual Ancestry, And The Likeness Of Some One Of Them Is Forever Unexpectedly Flashing Out In The Features Of A Descendant, It May Be After A Gap Of Several Centuries. In The Parliament Of The Present Every Man Represents A Constituency Of The Past.

Sentiment Is Intellectualized Emotion; Emotion Precipitated, As It Were, In Pretty Crystals By The Fancy.

The True Ideal Is Not Opposed To The Real But Lies In It; And Blessed Are The Eyes That Find It.

It May Be Glorious To Write Thoughts That Shall Glad The Two Or Three High Souls, Like Those Far Stars That Come In Sight Once In A Century.

One Learns More Metaphysics From A Single Temptation Than From All The Philosophers.

The Path Of Nature Is, Indeed, A Narrow One, And It Is Only The Immortals That Seek It, And, When They Find It, Do Not Find Themselves Cramped Therein.

The Only Faith That Wears Well And Holds Its Color In All Weathers Is That Which Is Woven Of Conviction And Set With The Sharp Mordant Of Experience.

The Fireflies O'er The Meadow In Pulses Come And Go.

It Is Curious How Tyrannical The Habit Of Reading Is, And What Shifts We Make To Escape Thinking. There Is No Bore We Dread Being Left Alone With So Much As Our Own Minds.

Reading Enables Us To See With The Keenest Eyes, To Hear With The Finest Ears, And Listen To The Sweetest Voices Of All Time.

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