The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence.
Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed s?pe cadendo=--The drop hollows the stone not by force, but by continually falling.
~Forgetfulness.~--There is nothing, no, nothing, innocent or good that dies and is forgotten: let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, or drowned in the deep sea. Forgotten! Oh, if the deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear! for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves!--_Dickens._
He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it.
Domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium=--The safest place of refuge for every man is his own home.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
Poor though I am, despised, forgot, / Yet God, my God, forgets me not; / And he is safe, and must succeed, / For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead.
The very fact of a Christian being here, and not in heaven, is a proof that some work awaits him.--_William Arnot._
Album calculum addere=--To give a white stone, _i.e._, to vote for, by putting a white stone into an urn, a black one indicating rejection.
No bird ever flew so high but it had to come to the ground for food.
Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth.
Here's a sigh for those who love me, / And a smile for those who hate, / And whatever sky's above me, / Here's a heart for every fate.
Flee sloth, for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.
God sometimes bestows gifts just that love may have something to renounce. The things that He puts into our hands are possibly put there that we may have the opportunity of showing what is in our heart. Oh, that there were in us a fervor of love that would lead us to examine everything that belongs to us, to ascertain how it might be made a means of showing our affection to Christ!--_George Bowen._
I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.
H?c amat obscurum; volet h?c sub luce videri, / Judicis argutum qu? non formidat acumen; / H?c placuit semel; h?c decies repetita placebit=--One (poem) courts the shade; another, not afraid of the critic's keen eye, chooses to be seen in a strong light; the one pleases but once, the other will still please if ten times repeated.
O my soul, is not this enough? Dost thou need more strength than the omnipotence of the united Trinity? Dost thou want more wisdom than exists in the Father, more love than displays itself in the Son, or more power than is manifest in the influences of the Spirit? Bring hither thine empty pitcher! Surely this well will fill it. Haste, gather up thy wants, and bring them here--thine emptiness, thy woes, thy needs. Behold, this river of God is full for thy supply; what canst thou desire beside? Go forth, my soul, in this thy might. The eternal God is thine helper!--_Spurgeon._
The whole of modern thought is steeped in science; it has made its way into the works of our best poets, and even the mere man of letters, who affects to ignore and despise science, is unconsciously impregnated with her spirit, and indebted for his best products to her methods. I believe that the greatest intellectual revolution mankind has yet seen is now slowly taking place by her agency. She is teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment, and not authority; she is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence; she is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of an intelligent being.
Titles of honour add not to his worth who is himself an honour to his title.
Seeking the aid of the Holy Spirit, let us aim at perfection. Let every day see some sin crucified, some battle fought, some good done, some victory won; let every fall be followed by a rise, and every step gained become, not a resting-place, but a new starting-point for further and higher progress.--_Guthrie._
How selfish we are even in our love. Here we live for a short season, and we know we must part sooner or later. We wish to go first, and to leave those whom we love behind us, and we sorrow because they went first and left us behind. As soon as one looks beyond this life, it seems so short, yet there was a time when it seemed endless.
Therefore the shortest way to hinder heresies is to teach all truths, and the surest means of refuting them is to declare them all. For what will the heretics say?
Trust not in present prosperity, for it is a departing guest.
What care I for words? yet words do well / When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
Why do you not accuse them of Arianism? For if they have said that Jesus Christ is God, perhaps it is not with a natural meaning, but as it is said: _Dii estis_.
One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapours, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre.
The segregation of the spiritual life from the practical life is a curse that falls impartially upon both sides of our existence. A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. [ Faith for Living , 1940.]
The time of the first advent was foretold, the time of the second is not so, because the first was to be secret, the second must be glorious, and so manifest that even his enemies will recognise it. But as his first coming was to be obscure, and to be known only of those who searched the Scriptures....
There is no other Christian explanation of the world than that God thought and uttered it, and that man follows in life and thought the thoughts of God. We must not forget that all our knowledge and hold of the world are again nothing but thoughts, which we transform under the law of causality into objective realities. It was this unswerving dependence on God in thought and life that made Jesus what He was, and what we should be if we only tried, viz. children of God.
Die Sorg' um Kunft'ges niemals frommt; Man fuhlt kein Uebel, bis es kommt. / Und wenn man's fuhlt, so hilft kein Rat; / Weisheit ist immer zu fruh und zu spat=--Concern for the future boots not; we feel no evil till it comes. And when we feel it, no counsel avails; wisdom is always too early and too late.
To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas.
Gedwongen liefde vergaat haast=--Love that is forced does not last.
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
There are men (and I think Priestley was one of them) to whom the satisfaction of throwing down a triumphant fallacy is as great as that which attends the discovery of a new truth; who feel better satisfied with the government of the world, when they have been helping Providence by knocking an imposture on the head; and who care even more for freedom of thought than for mere advance of knowledge. These men are the Carnots who organise victory for truth, and they are, at least, as important as the generals who visibly fight her battles in the field.
Spiritual Life is not something outside ourselves. The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and that we can stretch out some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there. This is the vague form in which many conceive the truth, but it is contrary to Christ's teaching and to the analogy of nature. Life is definite and resident; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but a resident tenant in the soul. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 87.
We are come too late, by several thousand years, to say anything new in morality. The finest and most beautiful thoughts concerning manners have been carried away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the more ingenious of the moderns.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.
Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers — for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings — let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals — and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
The vulgar antithesis of fact and theory is founded on a misconception of the nature of scientific theory, which is, or ought to be, no more than the expression of fact in a general form. Whatever goes beyond such expression is hypothesis; and hypotheses are not ends, but means. They should be regarded as instruments by which new lines of inquiry are indicated; or by the aid of which a provisional coherency and intelligibility may be given to seemingly disconnected groups of phenomena. The most useful of servants to the man of science, they are the worst of masters. And when the establishment of the hypothesis becomes the end, and fact is alluded to only so far as it suits the "Idee," science has no longer anything to do with the business.
Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.
Ehret die Frauen! Sie flechten und weben / Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben=--Honour to the women! they plait and weave roses of heaven for the life of earth.
His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for 's power to thunder.
When no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
Errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail.
In nearly all religions God remains far from man. I say in nearly all religions: for in Brahmanism the unity, not the union, of the human soul with Brahma is recognised as the highest aim. This unity with Deity, together with phenomenal difference, Jesus expressed in part through the _Logos_, in part through the Son. There is nothing so closely allied as thought and word, Father and Son. They can be distinguished but never separated, for they exist only through each other. In this matter the Greek philosophers considered all creation as the thought or the word of God, and the thought 'man' became naturally the highest _Logos_, realised in millions of men, and raised to the highest perfection in Jesus. As the thought exists only through the word, and the word only through the thought, so also the Father exists only through the Son, and the Son through the Father, and in this sense Jesus feels and declares himself the Son of God, and all men who believe in Him His brethren. This revelation or inspiration came to mankind through Jesus. No one knew the Father except the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and those to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him. This is the Christian Revelation in the true sense of the word.
_Prophecies._--The time was foretold by the state of the Jewish people, by the state of the heathen world, by the state of the temple, by the number of years.
evaluation by others is not a guide for me. The judgments of others, while they are to be listened to, and taken into account for what they are, can never be a guide for me. This has been a hard thing to learn.
In the smallest cottage there is room enough for two lovers.
It would be folly to entertain any ill-feeling towards those neighbours and rivals who, like ourselves, are slaves of Istar; but if somebody is to be starved, the modern world has no Oracle of Delphi to which the nations can appeal for an indication of the victim. It is open to us to try our fortune; and, if we avoid impending fate, there will be a certain ground for believing: that we are the right people to escape. _Securus judical orbis_.
They who embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing but their narrow selves.
What! Do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove God?--No.--And does not your religion say so?--No. For however it may be true in a sense for some souls to whom God has given this light, it is nevertheless false in regard to the majority.
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.
It is often the easiest move that completes the game. Fortune is like the lady whom a lover carried off from all his rivals by putting an additional lace upon his liveries.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are, but they only pay with interest what they have received.--_Macaulay._
God created men to have the heart of a warrior, placing a desire within us to stand up and fight for what’s pure, for what’s true. A man has a warrior’s heart. You have a warrior’s heart. You itch for a fight. That’s God’s design, not ours. That doesn’t mean that men should be aggressive, alpha-bully punks. (Nor does it mean that women can’t fight for what’s right as well.) It simply means that within every man, God has planted a divine desire to fight for righteousness.
It is difficult for a man to know himself.
Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.
He might be a very clever man by nature for aught I know, but he laid so many books upon his head that his brains could not move.
Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.
Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.
Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free. [ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States , 1787; The Works of John Adams , edited by Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850-56.]
If thou wouldst profit by thy reading, read humbly, simply, honestly, and not desiring to win a character for learning.
I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I would perish in the embrace of his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and are awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Each single angel is terrifying.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problems — neat, plausible, and wrong.
Turris fortissima est nomen Jehovah=--A most strong tower is the name of Jehovah.
No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must be grown. Pax Vobiscum, p. 50.
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; / For I am armed so strong in honesty / That they pass by me as the idle wind / Which I respect not.
Levia perpessi sumus, / Si flenda patimur=--Our sufferings are light, if they are merely such as we should weep for.
Et rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses / L'espace d'un matin=--As rose she lived the life of a rose for but the space of a morning.
Ampliat ?tatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est / Vivere bis vita posse priore frui=--The good man extends the term of his life; it is to live twice, to be able to enjoy one's former life.
When any government . . . undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
Here is no country for truth, she wanders unknown among men. God has covered her with a veil which leaves her unrecognised by those who hear not her voice; the way is open for blasphemy even against those truths which are at the least very apparent. If the truths of the Gospel are published, the contrary is also published, and questions are obscured, so that the people cannot discern, and they ask us, "What have you to make you believed rather than others? what sign do you give? you have words only, so have we, if you have miracles, good." That doctrine must be supported by miracle is a truth of which they make a pretext to blaspheme against doctrine. And if miracles happen, it is said that miracles are not enough without doctrine, and that is another way of blaspheming against miracles.
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.
This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand. By great good fortune the wiser among us have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at present played. We call them "Laws of Nature," and honour them because we find that if we obey them we win something for our pains. The cards are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental verifications. But what sane man would endeavour to solve this problem: given the rules of a game and the winnings, to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or gold-leaf? Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my mind no saner.
What can we call ours if God did not vouchsafe it to us from day to day? Yet it is so difficult to give oneself up entirely to Him, to trust everything to His Love and Wisdom. I thought I could say, 'Thy Will be done,' but I found I could not: my own will struggled against His Will. I prayed as we ought not to pray, and yet He heard me. It is so difficult not to grow very fond of this life and all its happiness, but the more we love it, the more we suffer, for we know we must lose it and it must all pass away.
Recommending secrecy where a dozen of people are acquainted with the circumstance to be concealed, is only putting the truth in masquerade, for the story will be circulated under twenty different shapes.
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem=--The only safety for the conquered is to hope for no safety.
When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow besides "borrow" or "to-morrow," his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks.
~Patience.~--There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
The final preparation . . . for the inheriting of Eternal Life must consist in the abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These must be unloosed and dissociated from the higher elements, And this is effected by a closing catastrophe--Death. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 248.