Thus rolls all our life away. We seek repose by resistance to obstacles, and so soon as these are surmounted, repose becomes intolerable. For we think either on the miseries we feel or on those we fear. And even when we seem sheltered on all sides, weariness, of its own accord, will spring from the depths of the heart wherein are its natural roots, and fill the soul with its poison.
There is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game the spoils of which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time brought its revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; and at length what we call the history of England dawned.
There has been no entirely new religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man; and the history of religion shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass, or as tinkling cymbals.
Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth, he avoids telling it to others, and all these tendencies, so far removed from justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.
Our imagination so enlarges the present by dint of continually reflecting on it, and so contracts eternity, by never reflecting on it, that we make a nothing of eternity and an eternity of nothing; and all this has such living roots in us, that all our reason cannot suppress them, and that....
[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.]
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.
Not so easily can a man tear up the roots of his old life, and transplant himself into a new soil and a foreign atmosphere.
Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are the roots a man has struck into his native soil; no tree that grows is rooted so.
New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
As the branch separated from the roots soon loses all life and verdure, so it is with good works which are not united with charity.--ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
Let us now suppose the child come to man's estate in the condition of a wandering savage, dependent for his food upon what he can pick up or catch, after the fashion of the Australian aborigines. It is plain that the place of mother, as the supplier of vital capital, is now taken by the fruits, seeds, and roots of plants and by various kinds of animals....
For still the new transcends the old In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves!
Christians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.--_Bunyan._
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.
It was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots out of the earth, into my bark out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
One of the striking aspects of the lines is the way they make us see a tree, with its pattern of twigs, leaves and branches, as a visual image of the invisible roots of language.
THE WRATH TO COME. — MATTHEW 3:7 I t is pleasant to pass over a country after a storm has spent itself—to smell the freshness of the herbs after the rain has passed away, and to note the drops while they glisten like purest diamonds in the sunlight. That is the position of a Christian. He is going through a land where the storm has spent itself upon His Savior’s head, and if there be a few drops of sorrow falling, they distill from clouds of mercy, and Jesus cheers him by the assurance that they are not for his destruction. But how terrible it is to witness the approach of a tempest—to note the forewarnings of the storm; to mark the birds of heaven as they droop their wings; to see the cattle as they lay their heads low in terror; to discern the face of the sky as it grows black, and to find the sun obscured, and the heavens angry and frowning! How terrible to await the dread advance of a hurricane, to wait in terrible apprehension till the wind rushes forth in fury, tearing up trees from their roots, forcing rocks from their pedestals, and hurling down all the dwelling-places of man! And yet, sinner, this is your present position. No hot drops have fallen as yet, but a shower of fire is coming. No terrible winds howl around you, but God’s tempest is gathering its dread artillery. So far the water-floods are dammed up by mercy, but the floodgates will soon be opened: The thunderbolts of God are still in His storehouse, the tempest is coming, and how awful will that moment be when God, robed in vengeance, shall march forth in fury! Where, where, where, O sinner, will you hide your head, or where will you run to? May the hand of mercy lead you now to Christ! He is freely set before you in the Gospel: His pierced side is the place of shelter. You know your need of Him; believe in Him, cast yourself upon Him, and then the fury shall be past forever.
One chilly autumn evening, he was reminded of the painter by a stalk of corn: the way it stood there armed in its rough coat of leaves, exposing its delicate roots atop the mounded earth like so many nerves, it was also a portrait of his own most vulnerable self. The discovery only served to increase his melancholy.
Wealth richer than both the Indies lies for every man, if he will endure. Not his oaks only and his fruit-trees, his very heart roots itself wherever he may abide--roots itself, draws nourishment from the deep fountains of universal being.
There is no part of astronomy which does not depend on the visual lines and on perspective, the daughter of painting; because the painter is he who by the necessity of his art has begotten perspective, and it is impossible to do without lines which include all the various figures of the bodies begotten by nature and without which the art of geometry is blind. And while the geometrist reduces every surface surrounded by lines to a square, and each body to the figure of the cube, and mathematics do the same with their cube roots and square roots, these two sciences deal only with the continuous and discontinuous quantity, but they do not deal with the quality which constitutes the beauty of the works of nature and the ornament of the world.
Mountains never shake hands. Their roots may touch; they may keep company some way up; but at length they part company, and rise into individual, isolated peaks. So it is with great men.
"But out of a branch of her roots"--Ptolemy Euergetes was the son of the same father as Berenice--"shall one stand up in his estate, who shall come with an army into the land of the king of the north, and shall put all under subjection, and carry captives into Egypt their gods, their princes, their gold, their silver, and all their precious spoils, and shall continue many years when the king of the North can do nought against him."--If he had not been called into Egypt by domestic reasons, says Justin, he would have entirely ruined Seleucus.
There is a tendency to class such men with toreadors and gamblers. People extol their contempt for death. But I would not give a fig for anybody’s contempt for death. If its roots are not sunk deep in an acceptance of responsibility, this contempt for death is the sign either of an impoverished soul or of youthful extravagance.
Religion is a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its roots and practical in its fruits.
While modern evangelical Christianity has undeniable historical roots, its explosion over the past thirty years is a triumph of the Gospel According to Wal-Mart.
He kissed me hard, as though he'd pluck up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips.--_Shakespeare._
I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.
The savage, like the child, borrows the capital he needs, and, at any rate, intentionally, does nothing towards repayment; it would plainly be an improper use of the word "produce" to say that his labour in hunting for the roots, or the fruits, or the eggs, or the grubs and snakes, which he finds and eats, "produces" or contributes to "produce" them. The same thing is true of more advanced tribes, who are still merely hunters, such as the Esquimaux. They may expend more labour and skill; but it is spent in destruction.
No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.
Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance; all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.
The religious Right went wrong by forgetting its religious and moral roots and going for political power; the civil rights movement was proven right in operating out of its spiritual strength and letting its political influence flow from its moral influence.
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.
A thorough study of Human Physiology is, in itself, an education broader and more comprehensive than much that passes under that name. There is no side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region of human knowledge into which either its roots, or its branches, do not extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, its waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of mind; its tributary streams flow from both; through its waters, as yet unfurrowed by the keel of any Columbus, lies the road, if such there be, from the one to the other; far away from that North-west Passage of mere speculation, in which so many brave souls have been hopelessly frozen up.
Faiths that are different in their roots, / Where the will is right and the heart is sound, / Are much the same in their fruits.
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
You don't value your peas for their roots or your carrots for their flowers. Now that's the way you should choose women.
Patriotism has its roots deep in the instincts and the affections. Love of country is the expansion of filial love.
Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
The position of the beds which constitute the coal-measures is infinitely diverse. Sometimes they are tilted up vertically, sometimes they are horizontal, sometimes curved into great basins; sometimes they come to the surface, sometimes they are covered up by thousands of feet of rock. But, whatever then-present position, there is abundant and conclusive evidence that every under-clay was once a surface soil. Not only do carbonized root-fibres frequently abound in these under-clays; but the stools of trees, the trunks of which are broken off and confounded with the bed of coal, have been repeatedly found passing into radiating roots, still embedded in the under-clay. On many parts of the coast of England, what are commonly known as "submarine forests" are to be seen at low water. They consist, for the most part, of short stools of oak, beech, and fir-trees, still fixed by their long roots in the bed of blue clay in which they originally grew. If one of these submarine forest beds should be gradually depressed and covered up by new deposits, it would present just the same characters as an under-clay of the coal, if the _Sigillaria_ and _Lepidodendron_ of the ancient world were substituted for the oak, or the beech, of our own times.
Instead of approaching the religions of the world with the preconceived idea that they are either corruptions of the Jewish religion, or descended, in common with the Jewish religion, from some perfect primeval revelation, the students of the science of religion have seen that it is their duty first to collect all the evidence of the early history of religious thought that is still accessible in the sacred books of the world, or in the mythology, customs, or even in the languages of various races. Afterwards they have undertaken a genealogical classification of all the materials that have hitherto been collected, and they have then only approached the question of the origin of religion in a new spirit, by trying to find out how the roots of the various religions, the radical concepts which form their foundation, and before all, the concept of the infinite, could have been developed, taking for granted nothing but sensuous perception on one side, and the world by which we are surrounded on the other.
We must, if we would husband life and not waste it, bravely resolve to dispense with the dispensable, to content ourselves with the minimum of want, to stake our reputation, if such be dear to us, upon intrinsic worth, and show once again, if we can, by our mere life and labour, what are the "roots of honour" and the "veins of wealth."
Great acts grow out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from great principles, working changes in society and tearing it up by the roots.
Free yourself from negative influence. Negative thoughts are the old habits that gnaw at the roots of the soul. Moses Shongo, (Seneca)
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling! Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling. Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight, Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight, There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter, Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water. Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing? Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o! Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away! Tom's in a hurry now. Evening will follow day. Tom's going home again water-lilies bringing. Hey! come derry dol! Can you hear me singing? -- J. R. R. Tolkien
What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes, And yet never grows?
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten"
Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled. Ever since, he's been talking about the good old dais. His students planted a small orchard in his honor; the trees all have square roots.
The Great Movie Posters: Different! Daring! Dynamic! Defying! Dumbfounding! SEE Uncle Tom lead the Negroes to FREEDOM! ... Now, all the SENSUAL and VIOLENT passions Roots couldn't show on TV! -- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1972) An appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality! -- Flesh and Blood Show (1973) WHEN THE CATS ARE HUNGRY... RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Alone, only a harmless pet... One Thousand Strong, They Become a Man-Eating Machine! -- The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972) They're Over-Exposed But Not Under-Developed! -- Cover Girl Models (1976)
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king. -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. -- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
My calculator is my shepherd, I shall not want It maketh me accurate to ten significant figures, and it leadeth me in scientific notation to 99 digits. It restoreth my square roots and guideth me along paths of floating decimal points for the sake of precision. Yea, tho I walk through the valley of surprise quizzes, I will fear no prof, for my calculator is there to hearten me. It prepareth a log table to comfort me, it prepareth an arc sin for me in the presence of my teachers. It annoints my homework with correct solutions, my interpolations are over. Surely, both precision and accuracy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of Texas instruments forever.