Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.
The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, andthe like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.
When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.
We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid hallucinations, and especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up first or last. But the mighty mother, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some great joys.
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.
The enthusiast always finds the master, the masters, whom he seeks. Always genius seeks genius, desires nothing so much as to be a pupil and to find those who can lend it aid to perfect itself.
Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.