Terrible penalty, with the ass-ears or without them, inevitable as death, written for ever in heaven, against all who, like Midas, misjudge the inner and the upper melodies, and prefer gold to goodness, desire to duty, falsehood to fact, wild nature to God, and a sensual piping Pan to a high-souled, wise-hearted, and spirit-breathing Apollo.
Jucundum et carum sterilis facit uxor amicum=--A wife who has no children makes (to her husband's heirs) a dear and engaging friend.
The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, joy. Righteousness, of course, is just doing what is right. Any boy who does what is right has the kingdom of God within him. Any boy who, instead of being quarrelsome, lives at peace with the other boys, has the kingdom of God within him. Any boy whose heart is filled with joy because he does what is right, has the kingdom of God within him. The kingdom of God is not going to religious meetings, and hearing strange religious experiences: the kingdom of God is doing what is right--living at peace with all men, being filled with joy in the Holy Ghost. First, p. 11.
The motive of the drama of human life is the necessity, laid upon every man who comes into the world, of discovering the mean between self-assertion and self-restraint suited to his character and his circumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies in this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of which can be but imperfectly known, and of which even an approximately right solution rarely presents itself, until that stern critic, aged experience, has been furnished with ample justification for venting his sarcastic humour upon the irreparable blunders we have already made.
Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity.
We would commend a faith that even seems audacious, like that of the sturdy Covenanter Robert Bruce, who requested, as he was dying, that his finger might be placed on one of God's strong promises, as though to challenge the Judge of all with it as he should enter his presence.
There is a God within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated.
He who fears nothing is not less powerful than he whom all fear.
Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.
So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece “Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of “over,” “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk
Silence is a wise thing, but they who observe it are few.
Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends.
The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Dan. xii., Hos. xiv. 10, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.
Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it an wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth, and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an erroneously favourable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than indeed we are?
Chi si trova senz' amici, e come un corpo senz' anima=--He who is without friends is like a body without a soul.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Rien n'est plus rare que la veritable bonte; ceux meme qui croient en avoir n'ont d'ordinaire que de la complaisance ou de la faiblesse=--Nothing is rarer than real goodness; those even who think they possess it are generally only good-natured and weak.
Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders. [ Boston Quarterly , July, 1840.]
Religion is so great a thing, that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek if it be obscure should be deprived of it. Why then should any complain, if it be such as to be found by seeking?
He always wins who sides with God.
Kings who affect to be familiar with their companions make use of men as they do of oranges, which, when they have well sucked, they throw away.
Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess of light blinds us, too great distance or nearness equally interfere with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse, too much truth overwhelms us. I know even those who cannot understand that if four be taken from nothing nothing remains. First principles are too plain for us, superfluous pleasure troubles us. Too many concords are unpleasing in music, and too many benefits annoy, we wish to have wherewithal to overpay our debt. _Beneficia eo usque læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur._
War does not decide who is right but who is left.
For who hath despised the day of small things?
You need someone a little dirty, honey, with a heart of gold,” she whispered in my ear as she patted my back. “I don’t think you’re going to find it in this century. We don’t make honest men who are that strong in their convictions anymore. Society seems to just…twist them bad.
Those who dwell in fear dwell next door to hate; and I think it is the cowardice of women that makes them such intense haters.
Equity is a roguish thing; for law we have a measure ... (but) equity is according to the conscience of him who is chancellor, and, as that is larger or narrower, so is equity.
Wer lange bedenkt, der wahlt nicht immer das Beste=--He who is long in making up his mind does not always choose the best.
Chi sa la strada, puo andar di trotto=--He who knows the road can go at a trot.
Quicken yourself up to duty by the remembrance of your station, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be.
He lies there who never feared the face of man.
Quien da la suyo antes de morir aparajese a bien sufrir=--Who parts with his own before he dies, let him prepare for death.
You’re moved by love. That means everything. Take it from one who’s lost all and then gained more.
I shall reserve the reasons of its size and power for later. But I greatly marvel that Socrates should have depreciated such a body, and that he should have said that it resembled an incandescent stone; and he who opposed him as regards this error acted rightly. But I wish I had words to blame those who seek to exalt the worship of men more than that of the sun, since in the universe there is no body of greater magnitude and power to be seen than the sun. And its light illumines all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and the vital spark descends from it, because the heat which is in living beings comes from the soul, and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe, as will be shown later; and it is certain that those who have elected to worship men as gods--as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, &c.--have fallen into a profound error, since even if a man were as great as our earth, he would have the appearance of a little star, which appears like a dot in the universe; and moreover these men are mortal, and decay and corrupt in their sepulchres.
Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.
The best test for Life is just LIVING. And living consists, as we have formerly seen, in corresponding with Environment. Those therefore who find within themselves, and regularly exercise, the faculties for corresponding with the Divine Environment, may be said to live the Spiritual Life. Natural Law, p. 390.
He bids fair to grow wise who has discovered that he is not so.
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.--_Erasmus._
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one.
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.--_Joubert._
He who imitates what is evil always exceeds; he who imitates what is good always falls short.
Memorem immemorem facit, qui monet quod memor meminit=--He who reminds a man with a good memory of what he remembers, makes him forget.
Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating, affection of the mind: we never reflect on the man we love without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone rises to our ideas as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom.--_Goldsmith._
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.--_Chapin._
The most unjust man to himself is he who humbles himself to one who hates him, and he who praises one whom he does not know.
The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.
Ibit eo quo vis, qui zonam perdidit=--He who has lost his purse (_lit._ girdle) will go wherever you wish.
Foolish I deem him who, thinking that his state is blest, rejoices in security; for Fortune, like a man distempered in his senses, leaps now this way, now that, and no man is always fortunate.--_Euripides._
The greatest achievements of men, were at first, nothing but dreams of the minds of men who knew that dreams are the seedlings of all achievements. A burning desire, to be and to do, is the starting point, from which the dreamer must take off.
Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's former state is like the desire of the moth for the light, and the man who, with constant yearning and joyful expectancy, awaits the new spring and the new summer, and every new month and the new year, and thinks that what he longs for is ever too late in coming, and does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the quintessence, the spirit, of the elements, which, finding itself captive in the soul of the human body, desires always to return to its giver. And I would have you know that this same desire is the quintessence which is inseparable from nature, and that man is the model of the world. And such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more, and life flies from him while he forever hopes to enjoy the goods which he has acquired at the price of great labour.
Wohl ungluckselig ist der Mann, / Der unterlasst das, was er kann, / Und unterfangt sich, was er nicht versteht; / Kein Wunder, dass er zu Grunde geht=--Unhappy indeed is the man who leaves off doing what he can do, and undertakes to do what he does not understand; no wonder he comes to no good.
He who seems not to himself more than he is, is more than he seems.--_Goethe._
Pity those whom Nature abuses, never those who abuse Nature.
Mountains interposed / Make enemies of nations, who had else / Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Wer ist machtiger als der Tod? / Wer da kann lachen, wenn er droht=--Who is mightier than death? He who can smile when death threatens.
O most blessed Virgin, who declarest in thy Canticle that it is owing to thy humility that God hath done great things in thee, obtain for me the grace to imitate thee, that is, to be obedient; because to obey is to practise humility.--ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.
Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired.
It’s brutal, making the list of Things I Don’t Do, especially for someone like me, who refuses most of the time to acknowledge that there is, in fact, a limit to her personal ability to get things done. But I’ve discovered that the list sets me free. I have it written in black and white, sitting on my desk, and when I’m tempted to go rogue and bake muffins because all the other moms do, I come back to both lists, and I remind myself about the important things: that time is finite, as is energy. And that one day I’ll stand before God and account for what I did with my life. There is work that is only mine to do: a child that is ours to raise, stories that are mine to tell, friends that are mine to walk with. The grandest seduction of all is the myth that DOING EVERYTHING BETTER gets us where we want to be. It gets us somewhere, certainly, but not anywhere worth being.
He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
All who seek God apart from Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, find no light to satisfy them, but form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving him without a mediator. Thus they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion almost equally abhors.
Finally, Christians were accused of being subversive, for they refused to worship the emperor and thus destroyed the very fiber of society. The apologists answered that it was true that they refused to worship the emperor or any other creature, but that in spite of this they were loyal subjects of the empire. What the emperor needs—they said—is not to be worshiped, but to be served; and those who serve him best are those who pray for him and for the empire to the only true God.
There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humour, and others only when they are sad.
I'm not one of those who can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after.
The man who pauses in his honesty wants little of a villain.
I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature.
The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack. Neither doctrinaire socialism nor unrestricted individualism nor any other ism will bring about the millennium. Collectivism and individualism must be used as supplementary, not as antagonistic, philosophies. In the last analysis the welfare of a nation depends on its having throughout a healthy development. A healthy social system must of necessity represent the sum of very many moral, intellectual, and economic forces, and each such force must depend in its turn partly upon the whole system; and all these many forces are needed to develop a high grade of character in the individual men and women who make up the nation. Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of failure to agree on terminology. The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism. [“The Thralldom of Names,” History as Literature .]
Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt, / Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen; der uber allen meinen Kraften thront, er kann nach aussen nichts bewegen=--The God who dwells in my breast can stir my inmost soul to its depths; he who sits as sovereign over all my powers has no control over things beyond.
Just are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all.
Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.
A man will often have to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious people in the world are Christians--Christians who misunderstand the nature of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they are not growing. Natural Law, Growth, p. 139.
What author has ever said the last word he wanted to say, and who has not had to close his eyes before he could write _Finis_ to his work?
Will the evolutionist who admits the regeneration of the frog under the modifying influence of a continued correspondence with a new environment, care to question the possibility of the soul acquiring such a faculty as that of Prayer, the marvellous breathing-function of the new creature, when in contact with the atmosphere of a besetting God? Is the change from the earthly to the heavenly more mysterious than the change from the aquatic to the terrestrial mode of life? Is Evolution to stop with the organic? If it be objected that it has taken ages to perfect the function in the batrachian, the reply is, that it will take ages to perfect the function in the Christian. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 244.
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
~Glory.~--To a father who loves his children victory has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.--_Napoleon._
When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this--that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. The Changed Life, p. 11.
What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul
All really great and honest men may be said to live three lives: there is one life which is seen and accepted by the world at large, a man's outward life; there is a second life which is seen by a man's most intimate friends, his household life; and there is a third life, seen only by the man himself, and by Him who searcheth the heart, which may be called the inner or heavenly--a life led in communion with God, a life of aspiration rather than of fulfilment.
There are those who see clearly that man has no other enemy than lust, which turns him from God, and not God, and that there is no other good but God, not a fat land. Let those who believe that the good of man is in the flesh, and evil that which turns him away from sensual pleasures, besot themselves with them and die in them. But those who seek God with their whole heart, whose only ill is not to see him, whose only desire is to possess him, whose only enemies are those who would turn them from him, who are afflicted when they are surrounded and overwhelmed by such enemies, may take comfort, for I declare to them this joyful news: there is for them a Redeemer, whom I will show them; I will show them that there is for them a God, and I will not show him to others. I will show them that a Messiah has been promised, who will deliver them from their enemies, and that one has come to deliver them from their iniquities, not from their enemies.
That state of life is alone suitable to a man in which and for which he was born, and he who is not led abroad by great objects is far happier at home.
The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest — indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind. In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom. [Hilaire Belloc, Cranmer: Archbishop of Canterbury 1533 – 1556 . Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1931, p. 56.]