Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, men to whom a crisis, which intimidates and paralyzes the majority, comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!
Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.
Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.