In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequences. If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America.… In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or, still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them. [ Democracy in America , Volume I, New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1994, pp. 55-58.]
~God.~--He that doth the ravens feed, yea, providentially caters for the sparrow, be comfort to my age!--_Shakespeare._
A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in the wit is out.
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
The excesses of our youth are draughts upon our age, payable with interest about thirty years after date.
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
Three forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake--as supposed--of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.--_Ruskin._
Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.
Crabbed age and youth / Cannot live together.
An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.
You would say that this magistrate whose reverend age commands the respect of a whole people is swayed by pure and lofty reason, that he judges all causes according to their true nature, unmoved by those mere accidents which only affect the imagination of the weak. See him go to sermon with devout zeal, strengthening his firm and impartial reason by the ardour of his divine love. He is ready to listen with exemplary respect. The preacher appears; but if nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comic face, if his barber have shaven him ill, or if his clothes be splashed more than is wont, then however great the truths he announces, I wager that our statesman lose his gravity.
A wise man poor Is like a sacred book that 's never read,-- To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead. This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school.
A weapon maintained at peak efficiency is all but ageless.
Urbes constituit ?tas: hora dissolvit. Momento fit cinis, diu sylva=--It takes an age to build a city, but an hour involves it in ruin. A forest is long in growing, but in a moment it may be reduced to ashes.
We're living in a golden age. All you need is gold.
Everything has changed. Because one upon a time I was just a child. Today I'm still a child, but this time I've got an iron will and 2 fists made of steel and I've aged 50 years. Now I finally have a clue. I've finally figured out that I'm strong enough, that maybe I'm a touch brave enough, that maybe this time I can do what I was meant to do.
How remarkable and how beautiful it is that the last page of the Revelation should come bending round to touch the first page of Genesis. The history of man began with angels with frowning faces and flaming swords barring the way to the Tree of Life. It ends with the guard of cherubim withdrawn; or rather, perhaps, sheathing their swords and becoming guides to the no longer forbidden fruit, instead of being its guards. That is the Bible's grand symbolical way of saying that all between--the sin, the misery, the death--is a parenthesis. God's purpose is not going to be thwarted. The end of His majestic march through history is to be men's access to the Tree of Life, from which, for the dreary ages--that are but as a moment in the great eternities--they were barred out by their sin,--_Alex. McLaren._
Me let the tender office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep awhile one parent from the sky.
_Types._--God willing to form to himself an holy people, whom he should separate from all other nations, whom he should deliver from their enemies, and should establish in a place of rest, has not only promised this, but has foretold by his prophets the time and the manner of his coming. And yet, to confirm the hope of his elect through all ages, he made them to see it in a figure, but never left them without assurances of his power and of his will to save them. For at the creation of man, Adam was the witness, and the guardian of the promise made concerning the Saviour who should be born of the woman, when men were still so near the creation that they could not have forgotten their creation and their fall. When those who had seen Adam were no longer in the world, God sent Noah, whom he saved, and drowned the whole earth by a miracle which marked sufficiently both the power which he had to save the world, and the will which he had to do so; and to raise up of the seed of the woman him whom he had promised.
Poets should turn philosophers in age, as Pope did. We are apt to grow chilly when we sit out our fire.
The age of miracles past! The age of miracles is for ever here.
This day is call'd — the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and sees old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends, And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian;" Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars, And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day." Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words, — Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd, — We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, Shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks, That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. King Henry V as portrayed in Henry V by
More credit may be thrown down in a moment than can be built up in an age.
Literature is so common a luxury that the age has grown fastidious.
The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.
At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
To elevate above the spirit of the age must be regarded as the end of education.
The yawning six-year chasm between my age and Chris’s is not the only fly in the proverbial ointment of this “loving Chris” business. I’m not even sure what “getting” Chris would involve; all I know is I want him. I want to be enfolded by him somehow, and to possess him. To have unfettered and exclusive access to him all the time. To feel how I feel around him all the time. To know that he loves being around me too. To feel more of his skin on my skin.
How widely its agencies vary,-- To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,-- As even its minted coins express, Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary.
Meditation has taught all men in all ages that this world is after all but a show--a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing.
Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger.
If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure.
[T]he institution of private property…is undergoing, at this time, a strain never put on it before. Not because the corporation, in essence, is retrogressive or unrepublican, but because in fact, it is unrepublican, and for that reason retrogressive also…. The effect of the corporation, under the prevailing policy of the free, go-as-you-please method of organization and management, has been to drive the bulk of our people, other than farmers, out of property ownership; and, if allowed to go on as present, it will keep them out.… The paramount problem is not how to stop the growth of property, and the building up of wealth, but how to manage it so that every species of property, like a healthy growing tree will spread its roots deeply and widely in the soil of a popular proprietorship. The paramount problem…is how to make this new form of property ownership a workable agent toward repeopleizing the proprietorship of the country’s industries…. Open to the wage-earner of the country the road to proprietorship…not as a gratuity, but as their proper allotment out of the combined forces that have made the enterprise successful. [“How to Save the Corporation,” MacClure’s Magazine, February, 1905.]
Magnus ab integro s?clorum nascitur ordo=--The great cycle of the ages begins its round anew.
[I]n the view of the Founding Fathers of this country, a widespread distribution of property ownership was essential to the preservation of individual liberty and a republican form of government. In their day, of course, they assumed that the seemingly limitless land of the new nation afforded the opportunity for every man to own a freehold farm. Some, however, looked ahead to the important role of property ownership in preserving the American experiment in a distant day and age, when America would lose its predominately agricultural character. As James Madison said in 1787: In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without land, but without any sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side. Today, of course, America has come a long way from its origins as a nation of Jeffersonian yeomen. As we became urbanized and industrialized, we tended to lose sight of the importance of widespread property ownership. No longer can we return, as a people, to an 18th century way of life. Yet we should remember that private property is an indispensable part of the foundation of a free country. As time and technology advance, we need to reshape the Founding Fathers’ idea of the importance of widespread property ownership to fit new circumstances. This is particularly true in a Nation in which millions of families now have no ownership stake in anything greater than a television set or secondhand automobile. [ Congressional Record , June 8, 1971, p. S8483.]
Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain, way, which we call "character," is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this "character"--this moral and intellectual essence of a man--does veritably pass over from one fleshy tabernacle to another, ana does really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new-born infant the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these become actualities; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies.
Nations, like individuals, are born, proceed through a predestined growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an untimely way; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, whatever that term may be.
We can now repeat the words which have been settled for us centuries ago, and which we have learnt by heart in our childhood--I believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth--with the conviction that they express, not only the faith of the apostles, or of oecumenical councils, but that they contain the Confession of Faith of the whole world, expressed in different ways, conveyed in thousands of languages, but always embodying the same fundamental truth. I call it fundamental, because it is founded, in the very nature of our mind, our reason, and our language, on a simple and ineradicable conviction that where there are acts there must be agents, and in the end one Prime Agent, whom man may know, not indeed in His own inscrutable essence, yet in His acts, as revealed in Nature.
We are pent, / Who sing to-day, by all the garnered wealth / Of ages of past song.
"I will show," said Agesilaus, "that it is not the places that grace men, but men the places."
Make your educational laws strict, and your criminal ones may be gentle; but leave youth its liberty, and you will have to dig dungeons for age.
See how the world its veterans rewards! A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
Old age is sad= (_trube_), =not because our joys, but because our hopes are cut short.
Impatience dries the blood sooner than age or sorrow.
Every age regards the dawning of new light as the destroying fire of morality; while that very age itself, with heart uninjured, finds itself raised one degree of light above the preceding.
The age difference between us didn’t matter to me. Maybe I did have daddy issues.
_Misdrasch el Kohelet_: "Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king who cannot foresee the future." The child is virtue, and the king is the malignity of man. It is called king because all the members obey it, and old because it is in the heart of man from infancy to old age, and foolish because it leads man in the way of perdition which he does not foresee.
The greatest men of any age, those who become its leaders when there is a great march to be begun, are separated from the average intellects of their day by a distance which is immeasurable in ordinary terms of wonder.
Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, "My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour."
No government agency is assigned to disseminate a knowledge of ownership and to increase the number of owners. [“Our Double Standard of Prosperity,” quoted in The Wanderer , August 20, 1992.]
Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.
Oil, wine, and friends improve by age.= _It. Pr._ [Greek: oimoi; ti d' oimoi? thneta gar peponthamen]--Alas! but why alas? We only suffer what other mortals do. [Greek: oinou de meket' ontos, ouk estin Kypris]--Where there is no longer any wine there is no love. _Euripides._ [Greek: hokosa pharmaka ouk ietai sideros ietai, hosa sideros ouk ietai pyr ietai]--What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.
Moralists of all ages and of all faiths, attending only to the relations of men towards one another in an ideal society, have agreed upon the "golden rule," "Do as you would be done by." In other words, let sympathy be your guide; put yourself in the place of the man towards whom your action is directed; and do to him what you would like to have done to yourself under the circumstances. However much one may admire the generosity of such a rule of conduct; however confident one may be that average men may be thoroughly depended upon not to carry it out to its full logical consequences; it is nevertheless desirable to recognise the fact that these consequences are incompatible with the existence of a civil state, under any circumstances of this world which have obtained, or, so far as one can see, are likely to come to pass.
Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice, for age whitens only the hair.--_J. Petit Senn._
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
Young men soon give, and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.
La jeunesse vit d'esperance, la vieillesse de souvenir=--Youth lives on hope, old age on memory.
Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age.
We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
Philosophy is to poetry what old age is to youth; and the stern truths of philosophy are as fatal to the fictions of the one as the chilling testimonies of experience are to the hopes of the other.
The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly.
At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.
The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.
The grasses and plants will be paler in proportion as the soil which nourishes them is leaner and devoid of moisture; the earth is leaner and less rich in moisture on the rocks of which the mountains are formed. And the trees will be smaller and thinner in proportion as they are nearer to the summit of the mountain; and the soil is leaner in proportion as it is nearer to the said summit, and it is richer in proportion as it is nearer the hollow valleys. Therefore, O painter, {126} thou shalt represent rocks on the summits of the mountains--for they are composed of rocks--for the greater part devoid of soil, and the plants which grow there are small and lean and for the greater part withered and dry from lack of moisture, and the sandy and lean earth is seen through the faded plants; and the small plants are stunted and aged, exiguous in size, with short and thick boughs and few leaves; they cover for the greater part the rust-coloured and dry roots, and are interwoven in the strata and the fissures of the rugged rocks, and issue from trunks maimed by men or by the winds; and in many places you see the rocks surmounting the summits of the high mountains, covered with a thin and faded moss; and in some places their true colour is laid bare and made visible owing to the percussion of the lightnings of Heaven, whose course is often obstructed to the damage of these rocks.
What is gray with age becomes religion.
Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs.
Liberty, and not theology, is the enthusiasm of the nineteenth century. The very men who would once have been conspicuous saints are now conspicuous revolutionists, for while their heroism and disinterestedness are their own, the direction which these qualities take is determined by the pressure of the age.
Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little of youth; living, for the most part, in the moment, and dating existence by the memory of its burdens.
Time consecrates; and what is grey with age becomes religion.
From his cradle / He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; / Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading; / Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, / But to those men who sought him, sweet as summer; / And to add greater honours to his age / Than man could give; he died fearing God.
No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, the usages, and the arts of his times shall have no share.
Vitium commune omnium est, / Quod nimium ad rem in senecta attenti sumus=--It is a fault common to us all, that in old age we become too much attached to worldly interests.
Reckless youth makes ruefu' age.
My way of life / Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf; / And that which should accompany old age, / As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but in their stead, / Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath / Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not.
Eyes speak all languages; wait for no letter of introduction; they ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning, nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee.
It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.