Background Image

...

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.

-James Russell Lowell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

A Nature Wise With

James Russell Lowell

...

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.

Views: 89397

Topic

More From James Russell Lowell

A Friendship Counting Nearly Forty Years Is The Finest Kind Of Shade-tree I Know.

And What Is So Rare As A Day In June? Then, If Ever, Come Perfect Days; Then Heaven Tries Earth If It Be In Tune, And Over It Softly Her Warm Ear Lays; Whether We Look, Or Whether We Listen, We Hear Life Murmur, Or See It Glisten.

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.

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.

Children Are God's Apostles, Sent Forth, Day By Day, To Preach Of Love, And Hope, And Peace.

To Genius Life Never Grows Commonplace.

For Only By Unlearning Wisdom Comes.

In The Earliest Ages Science Was Poetry, As In The Later Poetry Has Become Science.

There Are Two Kinds Of Genius. The First And Highest May Be Said To Speak Out Of The Eternal To The Present, And Must Compel Its Age To Understand It; The Second Understands Its Age, And Tells It What It Wishes To Be Told.

Metaphor Is No Argument, Though It Be Sometimes The Gunpowder To Drive One Home, And Imbed It In The Memory.

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.

No Sincere Desire Of Doing Good Need Make An Enemy Of A Single Human Being; That Philanthropy Has Surely A Flaw In It Which Cannot Sympathize With The Oppressor Equally As With The Oppressed.

There Is Surely Room For Yet Another Schoolmaster When A Score Of Seers Advertise Themselves In Boston Newspapers.

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!

All God's Angels Come To Us Disguised.

Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past.

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

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.

Nature Fits All Her Children With Something To Do, He Who Would Write And Can't Write, Can Surely Review.

Once To Every Man And Nation Comes The Moment To Decide.

Knowing Who You Are

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.

The Dandelions And Buttercups Gild All The Lawn: The Drowsy Bee Stumbles Among The Clover Tops, And Summer Sweetens All To Me.

The Devil Loves Nothing Better Than The Intolerance Of Reformers.

That Pernicious Sentiment, "our Country, Right Or Wrong."

Communism Means Barbarism.

Year By Year, More And More Of The World Gets Disenchanted. Even The Icy Privacy Of The Arctic And Antarctic Circles Is Invaded. We Have Played Jack Horner With Our Earth, Till There Is Never A Plum Left In It.

Ah, Men Do Not Know How Much Strength Is In Poise, That He Goes The Farthest Who Goes Far Enough.

Not Failure, But Low Aim, Is Crime.

Freedom Needs All Her Poets; It Is They Who Give Her Aspirations Wings, And To The Wiser Law Of Music Sway Her Wild Imaginings.

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

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.

May Is A Pious Fraud Of The Almanac.

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

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

Granting Our Wish Is One Of Fate's Saddest Jokes.

Suddenly All The Sky Is Hid As With The Shutting Of A Lid, One By One Great Drops Are Falling Doubtful And Slow, Down The Pane They Are Crookedly Crawling, And The Wind Breathes Low; Slowly The Circles Widen On The River, Widen And Mingle, One And All; Here And There The Slenderer Flowers Shiver, Struck By An Icy Rain-drop’s Fall.

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.

Never Did Poesy Appear So Full Of Heaven To Me, As When I Saw How It Would Pierce Through Pride And Fear To The Lives Of Coarsest Men.

And What Is So Rare As A Day In June? Then, If Ever, Come Perfect Days.

What Means This Glory Round Our Feet, The Magi Mused, "more Bright Than Morn!" And Voices Chanted Clear And Sweet, "to-day The Prince Of Peace Is Born.

Keats Longed For Fame, But Longed Above All To Deserve It.

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.

A Father Of The Church Said That Property Was Theft, Many Centuries Before Proudhon Was Born. Bourdaloue Reaffirmed It. Montesquieu Was The Inventor Of National Workshops And Of The Theory That The State Owed Every Man A Living. Nay, Was Not The Church Herself The First Organized Democracy?

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.

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

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.

Most Long Lives Resemble Those Threads Of Gossamer, The Nearest Approach To Nothing Unmeaningly Prolonged, Scarce Visible Pathways Of Some Worm From His Cradle To His Grave.

To Have Greatly Dreamed Precludes Low Ends.

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

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

Whoever Can Endure Unmixed Delight, Whoever Can Tolerate Music And Painting And Poetry All In One, Whoever Wishes To Be Rid Of Thought And To Let The Busy Anvils Of The Brain Be Silent For A Time, Let Him Read In The "faery Queen."

New Conditions Of Life Will Stimulate Thought And Give New Forms To Its Expression.

Some Day The Soft Ideal That We Wooed Confronts Us Fiercely, Foe-beset, Pursued, And Cries Reproachful: Was It Then My Praise, And Not Myself Was Loved? Prove Now Thy Truth; I Claim Of Thee The Promise Of Thy Youth.

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

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.

Humbleness Is Always Grace; Always Dignity

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.

Tyranny Is Always Weakness

In The Parliament Of The Present Every Man Represents A Constituency Of The Past.

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.

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.

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

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.

Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare.

[b]ut In Literature, It Should Be Remembered, A Thing Always Becomes His At Last Who Says It Best, And Thus Makes It His Own.

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.

The First Lesson Of Life Is To Burn Our Own Smoke; That Is, Not To Inflict On Outsiders Our Personal Sorrows And Petty Morbidness, Not To Keep Thinking Of Ourselves As Exceptional Cases.

The One Thing Finished In This Hasty World.

Then To Side With Truth Is Noble When We Share Her Wretched Crust, Ere Her Cause Bring Fame And Profit, And 't Is Prosperous To Be Just; Then It Is The Brave Man Chooses, While The Coward Stands Aside, Doubting In His Abject Spirit, Till His Lord Is Crucified.

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.

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.

There Comes Emerson First, Whose Rich Words, Every One, Are Like Gold Nails In Temples To Hang Trophies On.

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!

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

Violet! Sweet Violet! Thine Eyes Are Full Of Tears; Are They Wet Even Yet With The Thought Of Other Years?

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.

There Is A Law Of Neutralization Of Forces, Which Hinders Bodies From Sinking Beyond A Certain Depth In The Sea; But In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

There Is Something Magnificent In Having A Country To Love.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accursed; Man Is More Than Constitutions; Better Rot Beneath The Sod, Than Be True To Church And State While We Are Doubly False To God.

And But Two Ways Are Offered To Our Will, Toil With Rare Triumph, Ease With Safe Disgrace, The Problem Still For Us And All Of Human Race.

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

Death Is Delightful. Death Is Dawn, The Waking From A Weary Night Of Fevers Unto Truth And Light.

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

The Snow Had Begun In The Gloaming, And Busily All The Night Had Been Heaping Field And Highway With A Silence Deep And White.

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

That Best Academy, A Mother's Knee.

In The Storm, Like A Prophet O'ermaddened, Thou Singest And Tossest Thy Branches; Thy Heart With The Terror Is Gladdened, Thou Forebodest The Dread Avalanches.... In The Calm Thou O'erstretchest The Valleys With Thine Arms, As If Blessings Imploring, Like An Old King Led Forth From His Palace, When His People To Battle Are Pouring.

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

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

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.

Our American Republic Will Endure Only As Long As The Ideas Of The Men Who Founded It Continue Dominant.

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

Life Seems A Jest Of Fate's Contriving.

You've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

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.

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

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

A Weed Is No More Than A Flower In Disguise.

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

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?"

Moral Supremacy Is The Only One That Leaves Monuments, And Not Ruins, Behind It.

Console Yourself, Dear Man And Brother; Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure At Least Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People. Human Nature Has A Much Greater Genius For Sameness Than For Originality.

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.

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.

God'll Send The Bill To You.

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

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

Evil Springs Up, And Flowers, And Bears No Seed, And Feeds The Green Earth With Its Swift Decay, Leaving It Richer For The Growth Of Truth.

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

Not As All Other Women Are Is She That To My Soul Is Dear; Her Glorious Fancies Come From Far, Beneath The Silver Evening Star, And Yet Her Heart Is Ever Near.

Tis Easy Now For The Heart To Be True As For Grass To Be Green Or Skies To Be Blue-- 'tis The Natural Way Of Living.

Light Is The Symbol Of Truth.

Spiritual Healing

What A Sense Of Security In An Old Book Which Time Has Criticized For Us!

We Cannot But Think There Is Something Like A Fallacy In Mr. Buckle's Theory That The Advance Of Mankind Is Necessarily In The Direction Of Science, And Not In That Of Morals.

Be He Nowhere Else, God Is In All That Liberates And Lifts, In All That Humbles, Sweetens, And Consoles.

Attention Is The Stuff That Memory Is Made Of, And Memory Is Accumulated Genius.

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.

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.

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

To Make The Common Marvelous Is The Test Of Genius.

I Don't Believe In Principle, But I Do In Interest.

It Is The Rooted Instinct In Men To Admire What Is Better And More Beautiful Than Themselves.

We Look At Death Through The Cheap-glazed Windows Of The Flesh, And Believe Him The Monster Which The Flawed And Cracked Glass Represents Him.

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.

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.

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

Over All Life Broods Poesy, Like The Calm Blue Sky With Its Motherly, Rebuking Face. She Is The Great Reformer, And Where The Love Of Her Is Strong And Healthy, Wickedness And Wrong Cannot Long Prevail.

Endurance Is The Crowning Quality, And Patience All The Passion Of Great Hearts.

All Thoughtful Men Are Solitary And Original In Themselves.

Not But Wut Abstract War Is Horrid, I Sign To Thet With All My Heart, But Civilysation Doos Git Forrid Sometimes, Upon A Powder-cart.

Count Me O'er Earth's Chosen Heroes, - They Were Souls That Stood Alone, While The Men They Agonized For Hurled The Contumelious Stone, Stood Serene, And Down The Future Saw The Golden Beam Incline To The Side Of Perfect Justice, Mastered By Their Faith Divine, By One Man's Plain Truth To Manhood And To God's Supreme Design.

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.

What A Man Pays For Bread And Butter Is Worth Its Market Value, And No More. What He Pays For Love's Sake Is Gold Indeed, Which Has A Lure For Angels' Eyes, And Rings Well Upon God's Touchstone.

Nature, They Say, Doth Dote, And Cannot Make A Man Save On Some Worn-out Plan, Repeating Us By Rote.

History Is Clarified Experience.

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

Literature, Properly So Called, Draws Its Sap From The Deep Soil Of Human Nature's Common And Everlasting Sympathies, The Gathered Leaf-mound Of Countless Generations, And Not From Any Top Dressing Capriciously Scattered Over The Surface.

A Word Once Vulgarized Can Never Be Rehabilitated.

A Great Part Of Human Suffering Has Its Root In The Nature Of Man, And Not In That Of His Institutions.

Heaven Is Neither Here Nor There To Me. Everywhere And Nowhere. Just Not In Between, But I Believe In Heaven.

To Put More Faith In Lies And Hate Than Truth And Love, Is The True Atheism.

He Who Keeps His Faith Only, Cannot Be Discrowned.

One Day With Life And Heart Is More Than Time Enough To Find A World.

Joy Comes, Grief Goes, We Know Not How.

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

Love Lives On, And Hath A Power To Bless When They Who Loved Are Hidden In The Grave.

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

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.

Earth's Noblest Thing,-a Woman Perfected.

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.

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

In General Those Who Nothing Have To Say Contrive To Spend The Longest Time In Doing It.

Dear Common Flower, That Grow'st Beside The Way, Fringing The Dusty Road With Harmless Gold, First Pledge Of Blithesome May, Which Children Pluck, And, Full Of Pride Uphold.

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

They Are Slaves Who Fear To Speak, For The Fallen And The Weak.

Life Is The Jailer, Death The Angel Sent To Draw The Unwilling Bolts And Set Us Free.

He Who Esteems The Virginia Reel A Bait To Draw Saints From Their Spiritual Weal, And Regards The Quadrille As A Far Greater Knavery Than Crushing His African Children With Slavery, Since All Who Take Part In A Waltz Or Cotillon Are Mounted For Hell On The Devil's Own Pillion, Who, As Every True Orthodox Christian Well Knows, Approaches The Heart Through The Door Of The Toes.

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

Democracy Gives Every Man The Right To Be His Own Oppressor.

Democracies Have

Piety Is Indifferent Whether She Enters At The Eye Or At The Ear. There Is None Of The Senses At Which She Does Not Knock One Day Or Other. The Puritans Forgot This, And Thrust Beauty Out Of The Meeting-house And Slammed The Door In Her Face.

Who Speaks The Truth Stabs Falsehood To The Heart.

Solitude Is As Needful To The Imagination As Society Is Wholesome For The Character.

't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away; 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking.

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.

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.

It Is The Privilege Of Genius That Life Never Grows Common Place, As It Does For The Rest Of Us.

A Ginooine Statesman Should Be On His Guard, If He Must Hev Beliefs, Not To B'lieve 'em Too Hard.

Our Seasons Have No Fixed Returns, Without Our Will They Come And Go; At Noon Our Sudden Summer Burns, Ere Sunset All Is Snow.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

It Is Quite Too Common A Practice, Both In Readers And The More Superficial Class Of Critics, To Judge A Book By What It Is Not, A Matter Much Easier To Determine Than What It Is.

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

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

Books Are The Bees Which Carry The Quickening Pollen From One To Another Mind.

My Soul Is Not A Palace Of The Past.

One Of The Things Particularly Admirable In The Public Utterances Of President Lincoln Is A Certain Tone Of Familiar Dignity, Which, While It Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Attainment Of Mere Style, Is Also No Doubtful Indication Of Personal Character. There Must Be Something Essentially Noble In An Elective Ruler Who Can Descend To The Level Of Confidential Ease Without Forfeiting Respect, Something Very Manly In One Who Can Break Through The Etiquette Of His Conventional Rank And Trust Himself To The Reason And Intelligence Of Those Who Have Elected Him.

In Vain We Call Old Notions Fudge, And Bend Our Conscience To Our Dealing; The Ten Commandments Will Not Budge, And Stealing Will Continue Stealing.

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.

He Who Is Firmly Seated In Authority Soon Learns To Think Security, And Not Progress, The Highest Lesson In Statecraft.

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.

A Wise Man Travels To Discover Himself.

Here Come The Hum The Golden Bees Underneath Full Blossomed Trees, At Once With Glowing Fruit And Flowers Crowned.

Let Us Be Of Good Cheer, However, Remembering That The Misfortunes Hardest To Bear Are Those Which Never Come.

To Be Young Is Surely The Best, If The Most Precarious, Gift Of Life.

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.

It Is Curious For One Who Studies The Action And Reaction Of National Literature On Each Other, To See The Humor Of Swift And Sterne And Fielding, After Filtering Through Richter, Reappear In Carlyle With A Tinge Of Germanism That Makes It Novel, Alien, Or Even Displeasing, As The Case May Be, To The English Mind.

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

Mishaps Are Like Knives, That Either Serve Us Or Cut Us, As We Grasp Them By The Blade Or The Handle.

The Nurse Of Full-grown Souls Is Solitude.

A Sneer Is The Weapon Of The Weak. Like Other Devil's Weapons, It Is Always Cunningly Ready To Our Hand, And There Is More Poison In The Handle Than In The Point.

No Price Is Set On The Lavish Summer; June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

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

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

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

I Don't Believe In Princerple, But Oh I Du In Interest.

Fate Loves Best Such Syllables As Are Sweet And Sonorous On The Tongue.

Trending Author

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Joshua L. Liebman

Category