What are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic?
Man is too near all kinds of beasts,--a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.
A man's usefulness depends on his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.
It is in times of difficulty that great nations like great men display the whole energy of their character and become an object of admiration to posterity.
Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.
The man who preaches truth and applies it to the lives of his hearers will feel the nails and the thorns. He will lead a hard life, but a glorious one. May God raise up many such prophets. The church needs them badly.
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.