A life is only a life. It is what we all have to pay one day or another. Is life less loathsome because one learns to laugh at it as well as hate it? A just man will keep his promise; a generous man will go beyond it. No change of condition can alter the sentiments of a generous heart.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is the depth of generosity. Money is the locomotive power if all things. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentation. Fancy grows first imperious and, in time, despotic.

Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or anguish. He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not, for who is pleased with what he is?

Partial mortals take their measures of right and wrong from what they find themselves to be, and cannot help being. So awkwardness is a person in the awkward. The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

There is no moral truth, the weight of which can be felt without experience. Your imaginations can surpass wonders of art, but those of nature leave all imagination far behind.

Gentlemen  of an unpracticed imaginative capacity cannot vision for themselves exactly what they would, being unable to exercise authority over the proportions and the hues of the objects they conceive, which are very much at the mercy of their sportive caprices.

 

Gloomy dismal fancies, the usual companion of solitary bachelors, but it has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil, I think the love of man is the root of all evil.

The want for money is not as painful as the desire for love. A real passion is too might for words. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that cannot reveal to the everyday World that gives to genius that shy, and reserved, and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it.

It is astonishing how large a hole a woodpecker makes with so small a beak: it is owing to successive impressions. A newspaper that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary its readers by parsing anything. Eulogy is invariably dull.

There will always be something worth living for while there are shimmery afternoons. This thing we call existence; is it not a something which has its roots far down below in the dark, and its branches stretching out into the immensity above, which we among the clouds cannot see? Not a chance jumble; a living thing, a One.

The thought gives us intense satisfaction, we cannot tell why—death is nothing more than a self-interest and fortune’s change are every day, breaking up many a happy group, and scattering them far and wide; and the boys and girls never come back again. And love seems to be lost.

There is a subtlety of perception in real attachment. Ryan says he hit the floor and was unable to move, as he left his highest intellect behind, he felt as if the roots of his heart had been ripped apart. Here the parable ends, as all parables end—incomplete, disappointing; even when it is borne towards man by one of the humans.

He is a saint, and persecution is all that he requires to bring out the standard of perfection that bringeth rather a liking and make him perfect.

 

Noble minds emulative of perfection may be allowed a little generous envy. Randolph has God and men interested in his cause. Poetry and romance ought to be an imitation of real life. If we do not exert it, what signifies power?

All the great books in the World are but the mutilated shadowings-forth of invisible and eternally unembodied images in the soul. The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of a common language; and next the short duration of existence.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetimes. Mankind are not reasoning beings, if reason will not do with them. Deviation from common rules, when they proceed from genius, are not merely pardonable, but admirable.

Poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength. Powerful angels, safe in Heaven! They smile when sordid hearts triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction.

You must not forsake the ship in a tempest, because you cannot rule and keep down the winds. Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance. No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever known what a please is. Poems are wanted to complete the poet.

A man at five and thirty should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood. Life is not a donkey race in which everyone is to ride his neighbor’s donkey and the last is to win.

It takes people along time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women. Outrage upon outrage they have endured, and that deadens—or rather makes their heroism unscrupulous. Historians are not happy in their flights of fancy.

They display imagination without raising interest. In every bone, there is a marrow, and beneath every jacket lives an angel. Oh God! That man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!

The true picture of life is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed, to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

Felicitate thyself then upon the defects; which are evidently thy principal perfection; and which occasion thee a distinction which otherwise thou wouldest never have.

Power is ever dangerous and intoxicating. Human nature cannot bare it. It must be constantly checked, controlled and limited, or it declines inevitably into tyranny. The immense volumes of Eternity.

 

Love, like virtue, is not only its own reward, but sometimes entitles us to other rewards—energy and motion are made visible—memories are held in space. I feel nearer, more part of life. My movements, slow at first, gradually become faster and more dancelike. I was in the middle [of love] before I knew what I had begun. We are witness here to nature in the process of giving way to the forces of civilization. Any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural World can gain on our hearts and minds?

What a god is memory, to keep in life—to endow with an unslumbering vitality beyond that of our own nature—its unconscious company—the things that seem only born for its enjoyment. A single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale.  There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature, and are roused into corresponding violence.

When a general must regulate himself by the motions of a watchful adversary, how can he say beforehand what he will, or what he will not do? Struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good. They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenor of life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gage will fall. As to what lies below, leave that with God.

It is the secret of good taste and perfection in behavior to conceal that you every think of it at all. So it is the most perfect proof of a good style, that when you read the composition, you think of nothing but these sense; and are never struck with the idea that it is otherwise expressed than everybody would express it. It requires much personal strength, standing alone against the well-armed batteries of all one’s friends. Strength indicated a boundless nature—like the Maker. Strength is a God to you: Purity a virtue.

There are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the World does not need to fear the second best swordsman in the World; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he does not do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert is not prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! Not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.

We that fight the living World must have the Universal for succor of truth in it. Cast forth the heart in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you. The figures have to have vitality but not be in motion. They have to be animated with some force, with some energy. That is what prayer does. Prayer has the energy. Prayer draws us near to our own hearts, and purifies our thoughts. We draw one breath; we live for life. Ceased to be astonished, and only learn to love—an important lesson.

 

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Adam never fell till God made fools. How should you define the Monument of Folly? All the human race on one another’s shoulders. There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, a requirement, a crying requirement, somewhere about that man.

Many, by showing their jealous suspect of deceit, have made men see more subtle means to deceive them. Transparent natures are often deceptive in their depth; those pebbles at the bottom of the fountain are farther from us than we think. The best way to get out of a labyrinth is to retrace one’s steps.

Men are endowed with every gradation of courage, from the calm energy of reflections, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit; from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable, as there is greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful and ill-directed energies of despair.

 

Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.

I find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by always absolutely over-educated. However, the wild beast in him is not the less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not the less active because he resolved to do nothing.

A charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the charmer that it may succeed. Our virtues and vices depend too much on our circumstances. When I am in the country, I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.

If you meet each development of every question in the most natural and reasonable manner—presupposing that you possess that highest attribute of civilization, common sense—no question will ever resolve itself into a problem. And difficulties usually disappear as the range of vision contracts. Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. There is no false growth and nothing for one to feed on.

I am free from all thought, or belief in, anything false or fearsome. I cast out all the fear and with it all manifestation of fear. A false idea is neither person, place, nor thing, and has no one to believe in nor experience it. I am now one with the perfect life of complete wholeness. What a man can be, he must be. This requirement we may call self-actualization.

Conformity is sometimes considered a dirty word, equated with giving up uniqueness, forsaking your ideas, goals, and personal ways of doing things—in a word, “Copping out.” However, there is some degree of conformity in nearly everything we do, even when is seems utterly unique. I may have an extremely unusual job (say I am a greased-pig chaser at county fairs), but I am conforming in that I am working for a living, not being a full-time loafer.

In New York, the sea was already full of whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view—remain unseen. Let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful in representing of commonplace things—men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of Heaven falls on them.

To love is to be on the sea, out of sight of land. We have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof.

There are no vicious nor false habits. Every desire of my thought and heart is satisfied in the truth. I do not long for anything nor feel the lack of anything. I am complete within my temple; I am perfect within myself; I am happy and satisfied within my temple. I am one with all life within me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love in fantastic triumph sat, whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed. A dream it was in which I found myself. And you that hail me now, then hailed me king, in a brave palace that was all my own. Within, and all without it, mine; until drunk with excess of majesty and pride. I thought I towered so big and swelled so wide that of myself I burst the glittering bubble, which my ambition had about me blown and all again was darkness. I was told to live and to love, to laugh and to be glad.

 

Such a dream, as this, in which I may be walking now, dispensing solemn justice to you shadows, who make believe to listen; but anon Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel. Ay, even with all your airy theatre, may flit into the air you seem to rend with acclamations, leaving me to wake in the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake. I believed the voice of love and I received my soulmate. I was told to be still and know of the one almighty power, in and through all.

 

From this that waking is; or this and that, both waking and both dreaming; such a doubt confounds and clouds our mortal life about. However, whether wake or dreaming, this I know how dreamwise human glories come and go; whose momentary tenure not to break, walking as one who knows he soon may wake, so fairly carry the full cup, so well disordered insolence and passion quell, that there be nothing after to upbraid. I was told to let that power work through and in me.

 

Dreamer or doer in the part he played; whether tomorrow’s dawn shall break the spell, or the last trumpet of the Eternal Day, when dreaming, with the night, shall pass away. Red as the blood that flows through my heart, rain bring me a love that will never part. Bring is soon, bring it fast, a love that is strong, a love that lasts. I know that beauty has entered into my life, and will always remain there. I shall not fear, for the Host of Heaven are waiting upon me, and my love within me is perfect.

It is absurd to require of youth thoughts before they have any. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. The compensation for injustice is that in that dark ordeal we gather the worthiest around us. Convents seem calculated to make numbers really miserable, and only to hide from the World that they are so.

Be cautious, young people; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still) feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable and withdraw.

I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a four year’s dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Ah, God! What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.

Such as can retain their sense after the first prostrating effect of the supernatural are apt to experience terror in one of its strangest forms—a wild desire to fling themselves upon the terrible object. I am tormented with an everlasting desire for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. He could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given.

I will never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them. Ill-temper lies buried under a studied accumulation of smiles. Envy, hatred, and malice, retreat from the countenance, to entrench themselves more deeply in the heart. Treachery lurks under the flowers of courtesy. Ignorance and folly take refuge in that unmeaning gabble, small talk. Small indeed!—the absolute minimum of the infinitely little.

Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the World is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard and shows the bare bones beneath.

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in one basket”—which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.” Individual concessions is made without pain, it is also made without meaning, for it is not in human nature to project any amendment without a secret repugnance.

No experiment can be more precarious than that of a half-confidence. The secret of success is concentration; wherever there has been a great life, or a great work, that has gone before. Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing. Anything is possible to a man who knows his end and moves straight for it, and for it alone.

People who think they have been wronged are apt to be unreasonable, and people who have never tried to put themselves in the place of those who suffer are apt to think them extravagant in their views. There is often a strange inconsistency in the mind of man; he shall have sufficient virtue to condemn what he shall not have fortitude to resist. Fast and loose in one thing, fat and loose in everything.

The minds of these simple savages, unoccupied by matters of graver moment, were capable of deriving the utmost delight from circumstances which would have passed unnoticed in more intelligent communities. My comfort is, I am sure Randolph will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done. As Ryan could not receive comfort from any such expectation, he made no answer.