How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach?
I will be a man among men; and no longer a dreamer among shadows. Henceforth be mine a life of action and reality! I will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health and happiness.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
Oh, what a glory doth this world put on, for him who with a fervent heart goes forth under the bright and glorious sky, and looks on duties well performed, and days well spent.
To-day, to-morrow, every day, to thousands the end of the world is close at hand. And why should we fear it? We walk here, as it were, in the crypts of life; at times, from the great cathedral above us, we can hear the organ and the chanting choir; we see the light stream through the open door, when some friend goes up before us; and shall we fear to mount the narrow staircase of the grave that leads us out of this uncertain twilight into life eternal?
O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road!
Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine
The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
The mower's scythe makes music to my ear;
I am the mother of all dear delights;
I am the fairest daughter of the year.
The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.