Ν IN youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. THE OVER-SOUL FEBRUARY SECOND Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are. ART FEBRUARY THIRD Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends. They should own who can administer. WEALTH The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Himself from God he could not free; THE PROBLEM FEBRUARY FIFTH In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. FRIENDSHIP FEBRUARY SIXTH Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty information is given us not to sell ourselves too cheap; that we are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. EXPERIENCE FEBRUARY SEVENTH The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. CIRCLES FEBRUARY EIGHTH We like to come to a height of land and see the landscape, just as we value a general remark in conversation. But it is not the intention of nature that we should live by general views. We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour to hour, we should not be here to write and to read, but should have been burned or frozen long ago. NOMINALIST AND REALIST FEBRUARY NINTH The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. CHARACTER FEBRUARY TENTH I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when any thing is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. EXPERIENCE I care not how you are drest, Nor whether your name is base or brave, Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me, FATE FEBRUARY TWELFTH If the disparities of talent and position vanish when the individuals are seen in the duration which is necessary to complete the career of each, even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears when we ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, and know that they are made of the substance which ordaineth and doeth. USES OF GREAT MEN FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world alway before her, leaving worlds alway behind her. She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; all else is idle weeds for her wearing. THE OVER-SOUL FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH The permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false position, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in all that he does. Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume; and our life— the life of all of us-identical. ILLUSIONS FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances, the senses are despotic. MANNERS FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. NATURE FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH If you choose to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH 'Tis not within the force of Fate The fate-conjoined to separate. [ 15 ] FATE THRENODY |