The body sprang At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,--no!
Now seest thou not that the eye comprehends the beauty of the whole world? It is the head of astrology; it creates cosmography; it gives counsel and correction to all the human arts; it impels {84} men to seek diverse parts of the world; it is the principle of mathematics; its science is most certain; it has measured the height and the magnitude of the stars; it has discovered the elements and their abodes; it has been able to predict the events of the future, owing to the course of the stars; it has begotten architecture and perspective and divine painting. O most excellent above all the things created by God! What praise is there which can express thy nobility? What peoples, what tongues, are they who can perfectly describe thy true working? It is the window of the human body, through which the soul gazes and feasts on the beauty of the world; by reason of it the soul is content with its human prison, and without it this human prison is its torment; and by means of it human diligence has discovered fire by which the eye wins back what the darkness has stolen from it. It has adorned nature with agriculture and pleasant gardens. But what need is there for me to indulge in long and elevated discourse? What thing is there which acts not by reason of the eye? It impels men from the East to the West; it has discovered navigation; and in this it excels nature, because the simple products of the earth are finite and the works which the eye makes over to the hands are infinite, as the painter shows in his portrayal of countless forms of animals, herbs, plants and places.
"And is this all?" cried C?sar at his height, disgusted.
The power of the projecting force increases in proportion as the object projected is smaller; the acceleration of the motion increases to infinity proportionately to this diminution. It would follow that an atom would be almost as rapid as the imagination or the eye, which in a moment attains to the height of the stars, and consequently its voyage would be infinite, because the thing which can be infinitely diminished would have an infinite velocity and would travel on an infinite course (because every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity). And this opinion is {147} condemned by reason and consequently by experience.
Faith can not be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,--a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun,[533-1] and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.[533-2]
"From the height of these pyramids forty centuries look down on you."
Whatever comes out of despair cannot bear the title of valour, which should be lifted up to such a height that, holding all things under itself, it should be able to maintain its greatness even in the midst of miseries.
Littleness being correlative to greatness, and greatness to littleness, some have inferred man's littleness all the more because they have taken his greatness as a proof of it, and others have inferred his greatness with all the more force, because they have inferred it from his littleness; all that the one party was able to say for his greatness having served only as an argument of his littleness to others, because we are low in proportion to the height from which we have fallen, and the contrary is equally true. So that the one party returns on the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that in measure as men possess light the more they discern both the greatness and the littleness of man. In a word, man knows he is little. He is then little because he is so; but he is truly great because he knows it.
If the water which rises on the summits of the mountains comes from the sea, whence it is propelled by its weight to a greater height than that of the mountains, why has this portion of the element of water the power to elevate itself to such an altitude and to penetrate the earth by so great an expenditure of labour and time, when the residue of the element of water, whose only obstacle is the air which does not impede it, is not able to raise itself to a similar altitude? And thou who didst devise this theory, go and study nature, so that thou mayst cease to acquire such opinions of which thou hast made so great a collection, together with the capital and interest which thou dost possess.
The experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: Take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. This experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Artists do not trust to the judgement of the eye, because it is always deceptive, as is proved by him who wishes to divide a line into two equal parts by the eye, and is often deceived in the experiment; wherefore the good judges always fear--a fear which is not shared by the ignorant--to trust to their own judgement, and on this account they proceed by continually checking the {98} height, thickness and breadth of each part, and by so doing accomplish no more than their duty. But painting is marvellously devised of most subtle analyses, of which sculpture is altogether devoid, since its range is of the narrowest. To the sculptor who says that his science is more lasting than that of painting, I answer that this permanence is due to the quality of the material and not to that of the sculptor, and the sculptor has no right to give himself the credit for it, but he should let it redound to nature which created the material.
The height charms us, the steps to it do not; with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain.
What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support, That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
Aus grauser Tiefe tritt das Hohe kuhn hervor; / Aus harter Hulle kampft die Tugend sich hervor; / Der Schmerz ist die Geburt der hohern Naturen=--Out of a horrible depth the height steps boldly forth; out of a hard shell virtue fights its way to the light; pain is the birth (medium) of the higher natures.
There is no word more “dangerous” than liberalism, because to oppose it is the new “unforgivable sin.” The word can be used in three senses: (a) As a philosophy which believes in the progressive achievement of civil, social, political, economic and religious liberties within the framework of a moral law. (b) As an attitude which denies all standards extrinsic to man himself, measures freedom as a physical power rather than a moral power and identifies progress by the height of the pile of discarded moral and religious traditions. (c) As an ideology generally identified with the doctrine of laissez faire. The first kind of liberalism is to be encouraged, prospered and achieved. The last two are false for reasons well known to those who are familiar with Laski, Hocking, Tawney, Weber and the Papal Encyclicals. [ Communism and the Conscience of the West , Preface, 1948.]
We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Plus une pierre est jetee de haut, plus elle fait d'impression ou elle tombe=--The greater the height from which a stone is cast, the greater the impression on the spot where it falls.
Learning is pleasurable, but doing is the height of enjoyment.
The greater height sends down the deeper fall: / And good declin'd turns bad, turns worst of all.
The misgiving which will creep sometimes over the brightest faith has already received its expression and its rebuke: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Shall these "changes in the physical state of the environment" which threaten death to the natural man, destroy the spiritual? Shall death, or life, or angels, or principalities, or powers, arrest or tamper with his eternal correspondences? "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom. viii, 35-39. Natural Law, p. 230.
I say that the azure we see in the atmosphere is not its true colour, but is caused by warm moisture evaporated in minute and insensible atoms which the solar rays strike, rendering them luminous against the darkness of the infinite night of the fiery region which lies beyond and includes them. And this may be seen, as I saw it, by him who ascends Mounboso (Monte Rosa), a peak of the Alps which separates France from Italy. The base of this mountain gives birth to the four large rivers which in four different directions water the whole of Europe; and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this. It rises to such a height that it almost lifts itself up above the clouds; snow seldom falls on it, but only hail in summer, when the clouds are at their greatest height, and this hail is preserved there so that were it not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not occur twice in an age, a great quantity of ice would be piled up there by the hail, which in the middle of July I found to be very considerable; and I saw above me the dark air, and the sun which struck the mountain shone far lighter than in the plains below, because a lesser quantity of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun.
How did these isolated patches of a northern population get into these deep places? To explain the mystery, Forbes called to mind the fact that, in the epoch which immediately preceded the present, the climate was much colder (whence the name of "glacial epoch" applied to it); and that the shells which are found fossil, or sub-fossil, in deposits of that age are precisely such as are now to be met with only in the Scandinavian, or still more Arctic, regions. Undoubtedly, during the glacial epoch, the general population of our seas had, universally, the northern aspect which is now presented only by the "northern outliers"; just as the vegetation of the land, down to the sea-level, had the northern character which is, at present, exhibited only by the plants which live on the tops of our mountains. But, as the glacial epoch passed away, and the present climatal conditions were developed, the northern plants were able to maintain themselves only on the bleak heights, on which southern forms could not compete with them. And, in like manner, Forbes suggested that, after the glacial epoch, the northern animals then inhabiting the sea became restricted to the deeps in which they could hold their own against invaders from the south, better fitted than they to flourish in the warmer waters of the shallows. Thus depth in the sea corresponded in its effect upon distribution to height on the land.
It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim At objects in an airy height; The little pleasure of the game Is from afar to view the flight.
Painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size {99} placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. And this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain.
Oft when blind mortals think themselves secure, in height of bliss, they touch the brink of ruin.
This proud potentate, who loves to rule and domineer over her enemy, reason, has established in man a second nature in order to show her wide-spread influence. She makes men happy and miserable, sound and sick, rich and poor; she obliges reason to believe, doubt and deny; she dulls the senses, or sharpens them; she has her fools and wise; and nothing vexes us more than to see that she fills her votaries with a satisfaction far more full and entire than does reason. Those whose imagination is active feel greater complacency than the truly wise can reasonably allow themselves to feel. They look down on other men as from the height of empire, they argue with assurance and confidence, others with diffidence and fear, and this gaiety of countenance often gives the former an advantage in the minds of their hearers; such favour do the imaginary wise find from judges like-minded. Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them content, and so triumphs over reason, which can only make its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
He is good that does good to others. If he suffers for the good he does, he is better still; and if he suffers from them to whom he did good, he is arrived to that height of goodness that nothing but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if it proves his death, his virtue is at its summit,--it is heroism complete.--_Bruyère._
Human courage should rise to the height of human calamity.
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
Bon ton=--The height of fashion.
The example of Alexander's chastity has not made so many continent as that of his drunkenness has made intemperate. It is not shameful to be less virtuous than he, and it seems excusable to be no more vicious. We do not think ourselves wholly partakers in the vices of ordinary men, when we see that we share those of the great, not considering that in such matters the great are but ordinary men. We hold on to them by the same end by which they hold on to the people, for at whatsoever height they be, they are yet united at some point to the lowest of mankind. They are not suspended in the air, abstracted from our society. No, doubly no; if they are greater than we, it is because their heads are higher; but their feet are as low as ours. There all are on the same level, resting on the same earth, and by the lower extremity are as low as we are, as the meanest men, as children, and the brutes.
It is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same faces and manners of stuffs in one subject, and to let the greater part of his faces resemble their creator; and this has often been a source of wonder to me, for I have known some who in all their figures seem to have depicted themselves. And in the figures the actions and ways of the painter were visible. And if they are prompt in action and in their ways the figures are likewise prompt; and if the painter is pious, the figures with their twisted necks appear pious likewise, and if the painter is lazy the figures seem like laziness personified, and if the painter is deformed so are his figures, and if he is mad it is amply visible in figures of his subjects, which are devoid of intention and appear to be heedless of their action, some looking in one direction, some in another, as though they were dreaming; and therefore every manifestation in the picture corresponds to a peculiarity in the painter. And as I have often thought over the cause of this fault, it seems to me that we must conclude that the spirit which directs and governs everybody is that which forms our intellect, or rather, it is our intellect itself. It has {119} devised the whole figure of man according as it has thought fit that it should be, either with long or a short and turned-up nose, and thus it has determined its height and figure; and so powerful is the intellect that it gives motion to the arms of the painter and causes him to reproduce himself, since it appears to the spirit that this is the true method of portraying man, and he that does otherwise is in error. And should this spirit find any one who resembles its body, which it has formed, it loves it and becomes enamoured with it, and for this reason many men fall in love and marry wives which resemble themselves, and often the children which are born of the issue resemble their parents.
Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have increased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garotte, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the 'big folk' or 'biggers' as they call us. As a rule they avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them ... Their beginnings lie far back in the Good Ole Days when the planet was populated with the kind of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of Old Overcoat to see nowadays.
Love to a woman is what the sun is to the world, it is her life, her animating principle, without which she must droop, and, if the plant be very tender, die. Except under its influence, a woman can never attain her full growth, never touch the height of her possibilities, or bloom into the plenitude of her moral beauty. A loveless marriage dwarfs our natures, a marriage where love is develops them to their utmost.
It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line.
Du haut de ces pyramides quarante siecles nous contemplent=--From the height of these pyramids forty centuries look down on us.
Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.
Have I begun this path of heavenly love and knowledge now? Am I progressing in it? Do I feel some dawnings of the heavenly light, earnests and antepasts of the full day of glory? Let all God's dealings serve to quicken me in my way. Let every affection it may please Him to send, be as the moving pillar-cloud of old, beckoning me to move my tent onward, saying, "Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest." Let me be often standing now on faith's lofty eminences, looking for "the day of God"--the rising sun which is to set no more in weeping clouds. Wondrous progression! How will all earth's learning, its boasted acquirements and eagle-eyed philosophy sink into the lispings of very infancy in comparison with this manhood of knowledge! Heaven will be the true "_Excelsior_," its song, "_a song of degrees_," Jesus leading His people from height to height of glory, and saying, as He said to Nathaniel, "_Thou shalt see GREATER things than these!_"--_Macduff._
No man can see over his own height.
At 5:00 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbes stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realize how equal the Forbes and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier-mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5:00 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: “Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?
Your hands in your own pockets in the morning, is the beginning of the last day; your hands in other people's pockets at noon, is the height of the last day.
Wearers of rings and chains! / Pray do not take the pains / To set me right. / In vain my faults ye quote; / I write as others wrote / On Sunium's height.
It's height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.