The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other.
For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.
Overhead the sanctities of the stars shine forever-more... pouring satire on the pompous business of the day which they close, and making the generations of men show slight and evanescent.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.
Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.