A man was born not for prosperity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble rock-maple which all around our villages bleeds for the service of man. THE METHOD OF NATURE MARCH TWENTIETH As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire. MARCH TWENTY-FIRST The politics are base, The letters do not cheer, And 't is far in the deeps of history The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn, We plot and corrupt each other, ART THE WORLD-SOUL MARCH TWENTY-SECOND Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat, but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. CIRCLES MARCH TWENTY-THIRD The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap and so things of course, that in the infinite riches of the soul it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. THE OVER-SOUL MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH Those who live to the future, must always appear selfish to those who live to the present. CHARACTER MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH One way is right to go: the hero sees it, and moves on that aim, and has the world under him for root and support. He is to others as the world. His approbation is honor; his dissent, infamy. FATE MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH It is only necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities. MAN THE REFORMER MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but, wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world point their finger at it every day. MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH USES OF GREAT MEN Pure by impure is not seen. But justice journeying in the sphere MARCH TWENTY-NINTH ASTREA The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. MARCH THIRTIETH WEALTH Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. EXPERIENCE MARCH THIRTY-FIRST There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. SELF-RELIANCE |