O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.—Shakespeare.
What causes such a miscalculation in the amount of gratitude which men expect for the favors they have done, is, that the pride of the giver and that of the receiver can never agree as to the value of the benefit.—La Rochefoucauld.
If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parents, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of man due to our Father in heaven!—Hosea Ballou.
Grave.—There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.—Job 3:17, 18, 19.
We go to the grave of a friend saying, "A man is dead;" but angels throng about him, saying, "A man is born."—Beecher.
Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame.—Chapin.
There is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave!—the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.—Washington Irving.
What is the grave?
'Tis a cool, shady harbor, where the Christian
Wayworn and weary with life's rugged road,
Forgetting all life's sorrows, joys, and pains,
Lays his poor body down to rest—
Sleeps on—and wakes in heaven.
Greatness.—He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.—Lavater.
The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.—Channing.