Part 60

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness.--George Eliot.

To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, in a word, to be the idol of one's idol, is exceeding the limit of human joy; it is stealing fire from heaven and deserves death.--Madame de Girardin.

But to enlarge or illustrate this power and effects of love is to set a candle in the sun.--Burton.

There are as many kinds of love as there are races. A great tall German, learned, virtuous, phlegmatic, said one day: "Souls are sisters, fallen from heaven, who all at once recognize and run to meet each other." A little dry Frenchman, hot-blooded, witty, lively, replied to him: "You are right; you can always find shoes to fit."--Taine.

Love supreme defies all sophistry.--George Eliot.

It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.--Thoreau.

The love of man to woman is a thing common, and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.--Plato.

We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.--George Eliot.

Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied.--Southey.

Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.--George Eliot.

Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the humblest professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what keenness of observation is born under the influence of that feeling which drives away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun consumes the vapor of the morning.--Tuckerman.

~Luck.~--Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Luxury.~--Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.--John Adams.

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.--Quarles.

O brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.--Spurgeon.

O Luxury! Thou curst of heaven's decree.--Goldsmith.

Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.--Shakespeare.

~Lying.~--Lying's a certain mark of cowardice.--Southern.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.--Pascal.

Every brave man shuns more than death the shame of lying.--Corneille.

It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm.--Washington Allston.

Lies exist only to be extinguished.--Carlyle.

A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.--Tennyson.

~Madness.~--Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.--Johnson.

~Man.~--It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.--Pascal.

Man, I tell you, is a vicious animal.--Molière.

He is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims,--with immortal longings,--with thoughts which sweep the heavens, and wander through eternity. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.--Carlyle.

Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much obscurity.--Victor Hugo.