Merciful heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured His glassy essence--like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal.
It's curious and ridiculous how much the gaze of a prudish and painfully chaste man touched by love can sometimes express and that precisely at a moment when the man would of course sooner be glad to fall through the earth than to express anything with a word or a look.
Whoever possesses abundant joy must be a good man: but he is probably not the cleverest man, although he achieves exactly what it is that the cleverest man strives with all his cleverness to achieve.
Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.
It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.
A skillful commander is not overbearing. A skillful fighter does not become angry. A skillful conqueror does not compete with people. One who is skillful in using men puts himself below them. This is called the strength to use men. This is called matching Heaven, The highest principle of old.
The meek are those who quietly submit themselves to God, to His Word and to His rod, who follow His directions, and comply with His designs, and are gentle toward all men.
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.