It is possible to grow and not to grow, to grow less and to grow bigger, both at once – yes, even to grow by means of not growing!
Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have any end.
Happily for our blessedness, the joy of possession soon palls.
Then know,” he returned, and his voice was stern, “that thou who callest thyself alive, hast brought into this chamber the odours of death, and its air will not be wholesome for the sleepers until thou art gone from it!
There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul.
Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality?
If I cannot be noble myself, be a servant to his nobleness.
Deed, I aye had eneuch adu to du the thing I had to du, no to say the thing ‘at naebody wad du but mysel’. I hae had nae leisur’ for feelin’s an’ that,” insisted Miss Horn.
For the master believed in solitude and silence. Say rather, he believed in God. What the youth might think, feel, or judge, he could not tell; but he believed that when the Human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.
From a man’s rule of himself in smallest opposition, however devout, to the law of his being, arises the huge danger of nourishing, by the pride of self-conquest, a far worse than even the unchained animal self – the demoniac self. True victory over self is the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone. It is not subjugation that is enough, but subjugation by God. In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably – or succeed more miserably.
Do those who say, lo here or lo there are the signs of his coming, think to be too keen for him, and spy his approach? When he tells them to watch lest he find them neglecting their work, they stare this way and that, and watch lest he should succeed in coming like a thief! So throughout: if, instead of speculation, we gave ourselves to obedience, what a difference would soon be seen in the world!
The more originating, living, visible truth, embracing all truths in all relations, is Jesus Christ. He is true: He is the live Truth.
I think it far better for a man to go wrong upon his own honest judgment, than to go right upon anybody else’s judgment, however honest also.
You must consider that you are but a part of the whole, and that whatever you do to hurt the whole, or injure any of its parts, will return upon you who form one of those parts.
Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship Him.
I should be ill,” she continued, “if I did not live on the borders of the fairies’ country, and now and then eat of their food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race.
Some human faults are military virtues, like stupidity, and arrogance, and narrow-mindedness.
It’s a great thing, prayer. Nobody answers, but at least it stops you from thinking.
Just as you could form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he built, if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies, tell what any one of them is like, by looking at the flower till you feel that you understand it.
All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.