Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.
The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one. The greater the lie, the greater chance that it will be believed. All epoch-making events have been produced not by the written, but the spoken word.
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, you piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows whither.
We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.
I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.