Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.
When a man is just and firm in his purpose,
The citizens burning to approve a wrong
Or the frowning looks of a tyrant
Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind.
Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic,
Nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove:
Should the heavens crack and tumble down,
As the ruins crushed him he would not fear.
The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.
The people among which I lived - and yet live, mainly - made their living from cotton, wheat, cattle, oil, with the usual percentage of business men and professional men.
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?
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
If a man's thoughts are muddy, If he is reckless and full of deceit, How can he wear the yellow robe? Whoever is master of his own nature, Bright, clear and true, He may indeed wear the yellow robe.
"Ghost of the Future," he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"
Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination.
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.
The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.
A man's dignity isn't measured by the people he has around him when he's at the peak of his success, but by his ability not to forget those who helped him when his need was greatest.