If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It'll spring up and glow, like--like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways.
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings.
I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing -
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears -
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.
Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown -
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.
Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.
Do not conquer the world with force, for force only causes resistance. Thorns spring up when an army passes. Years of misery follow a great victory. Do only what needs to be done without using violence.
In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.
Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).
The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre.
Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
[L]ike thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born.
It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards.
The jostling of young minds against each other has this wonderful attribute, that one can never foresee the spark, nor predict the flash. What will spring up in a moment? Nobody knows.
Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.