In the Alps you sometimes find yourself under a clear blue sky on a bright sunny throne above the clouds—the top of the mountain being divided from the lower world by this magnificent boundary, which, occasionally unfolding, presents partial views of the earth beneath. A just emblem of the state of those who truly love.[55]
The sense of shame is so fine a weapon, it is a pity to risk its edge, or even its polish.
Happiness! a fearful word, seldom uttered but as the forerunner of calamity. It seems as if happiness, like the lamps in the ancient sepulchres, is of a nature to burn only while unnoticed and unknown.
There is no subject on which people betray more of their character than in their unprepared opinions on the marriages of others. How much sordid littleness and pitiful calculation breaks out on these occasions.
The fine taste in music prevalent in some Roman Catholic countries, is accounted for by the excellence of their Church Music. Perhaps the universal good style of writing in England may be owing in part to the beauty of the language of our liturgy. Any person who will take the trouble of comparing the epistolary style of the middle classes in other countries of modern Europe may perceive our superiority.
There is no virtue which is not caricatured by some defect. Christian charity is caricatured by that worldly-minded prudence which receives contumely and neglect, at least from equals or superiors, with a sort of awe approaching to admiration; and which more willingly renders its tribute of praise or favours to fear than love, alive to apprehension and dead to gratitude.
One may cut down one’s own ambition, but the shoots will spring up for one’s children.
To be in a passion with one’s superior is dangerous; with an equal, imprudent; with an inferior, cowardly.
Travelling gives weak minds an exaggerated idea of the value of those personal advantages which, in a country where the character and connexions of strangers and the gradations of English rank are unknown, obtain distinctions, attention, and flattery, far beyond what they would obtain at home.
Travelling is the most selfish of all pleasures, whether we consider the number of painful scenes we avoid, or of duties we elude, by absence from the natural sphere of our duties.