Forever to be blessed and cherished is the love-inspired mother or the teacher whose generous heart and luminous mind first leads us to believe in the priceless worth of wisdom and virtue, thus kindling within the soul a quenchless fire which warms and irradiates our whole being.
To be God's workman, to strive, to endure, to labor, even to the end, for truth and righteousness, this is life.
"My desire," says Dante, "and my will rolled onward, like a wheel in even motion, swayed by the love which moves the sun and all the stars."
If there are any who shrink from wrong more than from disgrace they best deserve to be called religious.
Strive not to be original or profound, but to think justly and to express clearly what thou seest; and so it may happen that thy view shall pierce deeper than thou knowest.
The words and deeds which are most certain to escape oblivion are those which nourish the higher life of the soul. Self-love, the love of one's real self, of one's soul, is the indispensable virtue. It is this we seek when we strive to know and love truth and justice; it is this we seek, when we love God and our fellow-men. In turning from ourselves to find them, we still seek ourselves; in abandoning life we seek richer and fuller life.
Truth separate from love is but half truth. Think of that which unites thee with thy fellows rather than of what divides thee from them. Religion is the bond of love, and not a subject for a debating club. If thou wouldst refute thy adversaries, commit the task to thy life more than to thy words. Read the history of controversy and ask thyself whether there is in it the spirit of Christ, the meek and lowly One? Its champions belong to the schools of the sophists rather than to the worshippers of God in spirit and in truth. And what has been the issue of all their disputes but hatreds and sects, persecutions and wars? If it is my duty to be polite and helpful to my neighbor, it is plainly also my duty to treat his opinions and beliefs with consideration and fairness.
There is a place in South America where the whole population have the goitre, and if a stranger who is free from the deformity chances to pass among them, they jeer and cry, "There goes one who has no goitre." What could be more delightfully human? We think it a holy thing to put down duelling, the battle of one with one; but we are full of enthusiasm over battles of a hundred thousand with a hundred thousand. Thus the Southern slave-owners were sworn advocates of the rights of man and of popular liberty.
The explanation of many provoking things is to be found in Dr. Johnson's words,—"Ignorance, simple ignorance;" but of many more probably in these other words,—Greed, simple greed.
"In science," says Bulwer, "read by preference the newest books; in literature, the oldest." This is wiser than Emerson's saying: "Never read a book which is not a year old."