Part 66

Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds.--Calderon.

Temperate as the morn.--Shakespeare.

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Mother.~--Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.--Macaulay.

Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother.--Bulwer-Lytton.

I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had not been for one thing, the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caused me to repeat the Lord's Prayer.--Thomas Randolph.

The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man.--George Eliot.

When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother,--mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman.--Luther.

There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart.--Hemans.

~Motive.~--The morality of an action depends upon the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but with respect to me, the action is very wrong.--Johnson.

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning.--Chapin.

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.--Kreeshna.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.--George Eliot.

Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, every labor enjoyment.--Jacobi.

~Mourning.~--Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!--Tennyson.

The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews.--Thomson.

~Music.~--Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune.--Lamb.

All musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion.--Sydney Smith.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.--Mrs. Stowe.

There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say that music is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of space.--Heinrich Heine.

The hidden soul of harmony.--Milton.

Give me some music! music, moody food of us that trade in love.--Shakespeare.

Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse.--Tuckerman.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.--Milton.

Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.--Goethe.

Music, which gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.--Tennyson.

Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.--George Eliot.

Music can noble hints impart, engender fury, kindle love, with unsuspected eloquence can move and manage all the man with secret art.--Addison.