The human will stands beyond all circumstances. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God Himself; a pure and a strong will is omnipotent. Before it all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb, and become its servants - the strong gigantic, infinite will in man.
What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
The whole life-effort of man is to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain life, cloud life, thunder life, air life, earth life, sun life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator is the root meaning of religion.
In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose.
Miserable is the man who loves a woman and takes her for his wife, pouring at her feet the sweat of his skin and the blood of his body and the life of his heart, and placing her in the hands of the fruit of his toil and the revenue of his diligence; for when he slowly wakes up, he finds that the heart that he endeavored to buy is given away freely and in sincerity to another man for the enjoyment of its hidden secrets and deepest love.
The
highest form of success comes to the man who does not shrink from
danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who, out of these, wins
the splendid ultimate triumph.
In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her-your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy.
You do not dominate. You are not the man and she is not the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name.
When there is love, the word duty disappears.
Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
The goal of mankind is knowledge ... Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.
Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.
Nothing in the many processes of Nature, whether she deals with men or with things, comes by chance or accident or is really at the mercy of external causes.
We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.