We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives "gentle" and "tender" would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. "He that is slow to anger" saith the sage, "is greater than the mighty, and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated all hearts.
I do not suppose that I am exceptionally endowed because I have all my life enjoyed a keen perception of the beauty offered us by nature and by art Now physical science may and probably will, some day, enable our posterity to set forth the exact physical concomitants and conditions of the strange rapture of beauty. But if ever that day arrives, the rapture will remain, just as it is now, outside and beyond the physical world; and, even in the mental world, something superadded to mere sensation. I do not wish to crow unduly over my humble cousin the orang, but in the aesthetic province, as in that of tine intellect, I am afraid he is nowhere. I doubt not he would detect a fruit amidst a wilderness of leaves where I could see nothing; but I am tolerably confident that he has never been awestruck, as I have been, by the dim religious gloom, as of a temple devoted to the earthgods, of the tropical forests which he inhabits. Yet I doubt not that our poor long-armed and short-legged friend, as he sits meditatively munching his durian fruit, has something behind that sad Socratic face of his which is utterly "beyond the bounds of physical science." Physical science may know all about his clutching the fruit and munching it and digesting it, and how the physical titillation of his palate is transmitted to some microscopic cells of the gray matter of his brain. But the feelings of sweetness and of satisfaction which, for a moment, hang out their signal lights in his melancholy eyes, are as utterly outside the bounds of physics as is the "fine frenzy" of a human rhapsodist.
It is not with saying, "Honey, honey," that sweetness comes into the mouth.
Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself; if thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend rather than the gloss of a sweet-lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than deceitful sweetness.
And ever against eating cares Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.
The best name by which we can think of God is Father. It is a loving, deep, sweet, heart-touching name, for the name of father is in its nature full of inborn sweetness and comfort. Therefore, also, we must confess ourselves children of God, for by this name we deeply touch our God, since there is not a sweeter sound to the father than the voice of the child.--_Martin Luther._
Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.
The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light.
The great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much.
We have not an hour of life in which our pleasures relish not some pain, our sours some sweetness.--_Massinger._
No hay dulzura sin sudor=--No sweetness without sweat.
The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow, and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined. An icy sweetness fills my mind, A sense that under thing and wing Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring.
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
Is the Beautiful without us, or is it not rather within us? What we call sweet and bitter is our own sweetness, our own bitterness, for nothing can be sweet or bitter without us. Is it not the same with the Beautiful? The world is like a rich mine, full of precious ore, but each man has to assay the ore for himself, before he knows what is gold and what is not. What, then, is the touchstone by which we assay the Beautiful? We have a touchstone for discovering the good. Whatever is unselfish is good. But--though nothing can be beautiful, except what is in some sense or other good, not everything that is good is also beautiful. What, then, is that something which, added to the good, makes it beautiful? It is a great mystery. It is so to us as it was to Plato. We must have gazed on the Beautiful in the dreams of childhood, or, it may be, in a former life, and now we look for it everywhere, but we can never find it,--never at least in all its brightness and fulness again, never as we remember it once as the vision of a half-forgotten dream. Nor do we all remember the same ideal--some poor creatures remember none at all.... The ideal, therefore, of what is beautiful is within us, that is all we know; how it came there we shall never know. It is certainly not of this life, else we could define it; but it underlies this life, else we could not feel it. Sometimes it meets us like a smile of Nature, sometimes like a glance of God; and if anything proves that there is a great past, and a great future, a Beyond, a higher world, a hidden life, it is our faith in the Beautiful.
"Out of the cater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness"
The sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
Truth need not always be embodied; enough if it hovers around like a spiritual essence, which gives one peace, and fills the atmosphere with a solemn sweetness like harmonious music of bells.--_Goethe._
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
_Vocations._--The sweetness of glory is so great that join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.
It is in those acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their denial knowledge.--_George Eliot._
So these days, I’m on the lookout for grace, and I’m especially on the lookout for ways that I withhold grace from myself and from other people. At first, showing people grace makes you feel powerful, like scattering candy from a float in a parade—grace for you, grace for you. You become almost giddy, thinking of people in generous ways, allowing for their faults, absorbing minor irritations. You feel great, and then you start to feel just ever so slightly superior, because you’re so incredibly evolved and gracious. But then inevitably something happens, and it usually involves you confronting one of your worst selves, often in public, and you realize that you’re not throwing candy off a float to a nameless, dirty public, but rather that you are that nameless, dirty public, and that you are starving and on your knees, praying for a little piece of sweetness, just one mouthful of grace.
All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love.
Great attention to what is said and sweetness of speech, a great degree of kindness and the appearance of awe, are always tokens of a man's attachment.
Covenanters._ Where music dwells Lingering and wandering on as loth to die, Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.
Mira qu?dam in cognoscendo suavitas et delectatio=--There is a certain wonderful sweetness and delight in gaining knowledge.
A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.
Sie sind voll Honig die Blumen; / Aber die Biene nur findet die Sussigkeit aus=--The flowers are full of honey, but only the bee finds out the sweetness.
So behave that the odour of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
Consider in the streets at nightfall the faces of men and women when it is bad weather, what grace and sweetness they manifest!
The distant sounds of music, that catch new sweetness as they vibrate through the long-drawn valley, are not more pleasing to the ear than the tidings of a far-distant friend.
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably, and well, in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.--_Montaigne._
Preserving the sweetness of proportion and expressing itself beyond expression.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
There is no such thing as being agreeable without a thorough good-humour, a natural sweetness of temper, enlivened by cheerfulness.
A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky: There eke the soft delights that witchingly Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh; But whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.
This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by
Let thy mind's sweetness have his operation / Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all.
I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene / The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; / Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweetness.
I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns, Knowing the body\x92s sweetness, the mind\x92s treason; Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen, Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart\x92s need.
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.
African violet: Such worth is rare Apple blossom: Preference Bachelor's button: Celibacy Bay leaf: I change but in death Camelia: Reflected loveliness Chrysanthemum, red: I love Chrysanthemum, white: Truth Chrysanthemum, other: Slighted love Clover: Be mine Crocus: Abuse not Daffodil: Innocence Forget-me-not: True love Fuchsia: Fast Gardenia: Secret, untold love Honeysuckle: Bonds of love Ivy: Friendship, fidelity, marriage Jasmine: Amiablity, transports of joy, sensuality Leaves (dead): Melancholy Lilac: Youthful innocence Lilly: Purity, sweetness</p> Lilly of the valley: Return of happiness Magnolia: Dignity, perseverance * An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years. BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste. The official brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it. Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body. The GNU brewery is mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can, which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented. Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe. POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager. Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout. Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout. Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was discontinued in favor of a lager. SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of stout or the sweetness of ale.
His head was bare. He appeared to have grown thin and pale. His black clothes were hardly discernible. The twilight threw a wan light on his fine brow, and covered his eyes in shadows. Beneath a veil of incomparable sweetness, he had something about him that suggested death and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day, and by the thought of a soul that is taking flight.
By dint of labor, of perseverance, of attention, and of buckets of water, he had succeeded in creating after the Creator, and he had invented certain tulips and certain dahlias which seemed to have been forgotten by nature. He was ingenious; he had forestalled Soulange Bodin in the formation of little clumps of earth of heath mould, for the cultivation of rare and precious shrubs from America and China. He was in his alleys from the break of day, in summer, planting, cutting, hoeing, watering, walking amid his flowers with an air of kindness, sadness, and sweetness, sometimes standing motionless and thoughtful for hours, listening to the song of a bird in the trees, the babble of a child in a house, or with his eyes fixed on a drop of dew at the tip of a spear of grass, of which the sun made a carbuncle. His table was very plain, and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give way, and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that he seemed shy, he rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who tapped at his pane and his cure, the Abbe Mabeuf, a good old man. Nevertheless, if the inhabitants of the town, or strangers, or any chance comers, curious to see his tulips, rang at his little cottage, he opened his door with a smile. He was the "brigand of the Loire."
9:13. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed: and the mountains shall drop sweetness, and every hill shall be tilled.
2:12. You shall offer only the firstfruits of them and gifts: but they shall not be put upon the altar, for a savour of sweetness.
To the elegance of a nervous and slight form had succeeded the solidity of a rounded and muscular figure. As to his voice, prayers, sobs, and imprecations had changed it so that at times it was of a singularly penetrating sweetness, and at others rough and almost hoarse. Moreover, from being so long in twilight or darkness, his eyes had acquired the faculty of distinguishing objects in the night, common to the hyena and the wolf. Edmond smiled when he beheld himself: it was impossible that his best friend--if, indeed, he had any friend left--could recognize him; he could not recognize himself.
The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when the sun has set in an unclouded azure sky. Twilight had descended; night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-Elysees was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of Thenardier's wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
She thanked them both with a smile. "No," returned she, "but I feel some emotion on seeing, for the first time, the man without whose intervention we should have been in tears and desolation. Monsieur," continued the countess, advancing with the majesty of a queen, "I owe to you the life of my son, and for this I bless you. Now, I thank you for the pleasure you give me in thus affording me the opportunity of thanking you as I have blessed you, from the bottom of my heart." The count bowed again, but lower than before; He was even paler than Mercedes. "Madame," said he, "the count and yourself recompense too generously a simple action. To save a man, to spare a father's feelings, or a mother's sensibility, is not to do a good action, but a simple deed of humanity." At these words, uttered with the most exquisite sweetness and politeness, Madame de Morcerf replied. "It is very fortunate for my son, monsieur, that he found such a friend, and I thank God that things are thus." And Mercedes raised her fine eyes to heaven with so fervent an expression of gratitude, that the count fancied he saw tears in them. M. de Morcerf approached her. "Madame," said he. "I have already made my excuses to the count for quitting him, and I pray you to do so also. The sitting commences at two; it is now three, and I am to speak."
Thenardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil and cunning sweetness.
Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the early days of the revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, with uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris in an uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization.
"No--no--Jane; you must not go. No--I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself--I must have you. The world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame."
For the last six weeks, Marius had little by little, slowly, by degrees, taken possession of Cosette each day. As we have already explained, in the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the body; later on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one does not take the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes add: "Because there is none"; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy. So Marius possessed Cosette, as spirits possess, but he enveloped her with all his soul, and seized her jealously with incredible conviction. He possessed her smile, her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance of her blue eyes, the sweetness of her skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts. Therefore, he possessed all Cosette's dreams.
30:20. O how great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee! Which thou hast wrought for them that hope in thee, in the sight of the sons of men.
Marius was, at this epoch, a handsome young man, of medium stature, with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow, well-opened and passionate nostrils, an air of calmness and sincerity, and with something indescribably proud, thoughtful, and innocent over his whole countenance. His profile, all of whose lines were rounded, without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic sweetness, which has made its way into the French physiognomy by way of Alsace and Lorraine, and that complete absence of angles which rendered the Sicambres so easily recognizable among the Romans, and which distinguishes the leonine from the aquiline race. He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in nearly equal parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he had all that is required to be stupid: one more turn of the key, and he might be sublime. His manners were reserved, cold, polished, not very genial. As his mouth was charming, his lips the reddest, and his teeth the whitest in the world, his smile corrected the severity of his face, as a whole. At certain moments, that pure brow and that voluptuous smile presented a singular contrast. His eyes were small, but his glance was large.
There was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself, great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all that he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence which was so good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all, to honor, to liberty. He should never more stroll in the fields; he should never more hear the birds sing in the month of May; he should never more bestow alms on the little children; he should never more experience the sweetness of having glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he should quit that house which he had built, that little chamber! Everything seemed charming to him at that moment. Never again should he read those books; never more should he write on that little table of white wood; his old portress, the only servant whom he kept, would never more bring him his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of that, the convict gang, the iron necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain on his ankle, fatigue, the cell, the camp bed all those horrors which he knew so well! At his age, after having been what he was! If he were only young again! but to be addressed in his old age as "thou" by any one who pleased; to be searched by the convict-guard; to receive the galley-sergeant's cudgellings; to wear iron-bound shoes on his bare feet; to have to stretch out his leg night and morning to the hammer of the roundsman who visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of strangers, who would be told: "That man yonder is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of M. sur M."; and at night, dripping with perspiration, overwhelmed with lassitude, their green caps drawn over their eyes, to remount, two by two, the ladder staircase of the galleys beneath the sergeant's whip. Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as malicious as an intelligent being, and become as monstrous as the human heart?