Life is a matter of small virtues, but we have to bring them to perfection. This may be done by great principles. The humblest act may proceed from that which is beyond the stars.
What a vile antithesis is that between a man and his faults! If I love a man, I do not love his faults, for they are abstractions, but I love the man in his faults. Are they not truly himself? He is often more himself in his faults than in his virtues.
We should not talk as if we were responsible for the effect of what we say. We are responsible for saying it, and for nothing more. A higher power is responsible for the effect which is to follow from each cause.
Wisdom for old age.—Check the propensity to dwell on what you have thought before. Try to get new ideas into your head. Beware of giving trouble or asking for sympathy. Do everything yourself, which you have been in the habit of doing, so long as you can move a muscle, and when you cannot, secure, if possible, paid help: watch what the most devoted of friends or relatives say of continued attendance on the sick: note the relief when the sick man dies. Let not the thought sadden you that six weeks after you are in your grave those to whom you are now dear will be laughing and living just as if you had never existed. Why should they not? Are you of such consequence that they should for ever wear mourning for you? A slow march as you are carried to the churchyard, but when a handful of earth has been thrown on your coffin, let everybody go home to draw up the blinds and open the windows. So much dead already, all passion, so many capacities for enjoyment, why care for this miserable residuum, this poor empty I?
Clear vision is not often the cause of distress. It is rather the cloud of imagination distorting what is before us and preventing distinct view. Science, removing the heavens to an infinite distance, destroying traditions, abolishing our little theologies, does not disturb our peace so seriously as that vague dreaming in which there is no thinking.
Ah, it is not a quarrel which is so deadly! It is the strange transformation of what were once thought to be charms and virtues. The soft blue eyes are now simply silly; innocence is stupidity; docility is incapacity of resolution; the sweet, even temper is absence of passion.
Is it true that less evidence is necessary to prove an event which is probable than one that is improbable? The probability of an event is no evidence that it actually happened. Its probability may be the reason why we should examine the evidence more closely, because witnesses are more likely, in the case of a probable event, to refrain from scrutiny than in the case of one not probable. I sit at my window and see a whitish object with four legs in a field. I am short-sighted, but I at once say ‘a cow,’ and take no pains to ascertain whether it is a cow or not. If I had seen a white object apparently with three legs only, I should have gone out, inspected it closely, and should have called other people to look at it.
I pray for a gift which perhaps would be miraculous: simply to be able to see that field of waving grass as I should see it if association and the ‘film of custom’ did not obscure it.
Why do we admire intellect when it is united with even diabolic disregard of moral laws? Partly because it stands out more prominently; partly because it triumphs over obstacles; but mainly because we are all more or less in sympathy with insurrection and the assertion of individuality.
As we move higher, personality becomes of less consequence. We do not live in the ‘I,’ but in truths. Something of a metaphysical hint here.