Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of every day: 'tis the heat which sets our human atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when once it is begun.
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.
The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it... ''Beware of me,'' it says, ''but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.
We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.
England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them.
A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step downward, is a step upward. The man who renounceshimself, comes to himself.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear.