Part 67

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world; one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound.--Mazzini.

~Naïveté.~--Naïveté is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is not natural.--Mendelssohn.

~Name.~--A virtuous name is the precious only good for which queens and peasants' wives must contest together.--Schiller.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.--Goethe.

~Napoleon.~--Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones.--Byron.

Napoleon I. might have been the Washington of France; he preferred to be another Attila,--a question of taste.--F. A. Durivage.

~Nature.~--Nature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer.--Bulwer-Lytton.

Nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her.--Bacon.

Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature.--De Finod.

Nature,--a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter.--Bulwer-Lytton.

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere.--Emerson.

Nature is poetic, but not mankind. When one aims at truth it is easier to find the poetic side of nature than of man.--X. Doudan.

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.--Chapin.

Nature is no sentimentalist,--does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.--Emerson.

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit: a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,--the root, the branch, the fruits,--the principles, the consequences.--Pascal.

A noble nature can alone attract the noble, and alone knows how to retain them.--Goethe.

Nature, the vicar of the almighty Lord.--Chaucer.

A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.--Coleridge.

We, by art, unteach what Nature taught.--Dryden.

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.--Alcott.

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.--Emerson.

Nature is an absolute and jealous divinity. Lovely, eloquent, and instructive in all her inequalities and contrasts, she hides her face, and remains mute to those who, by attempting to re-fashion her, profane her.--Mazzini.

~Necessity.~--Necessity is a bad recommendation to favors of any kind, which as seldom fall to those who really want them, as to those who really deserve them.--Fielding.

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.--Johnson.

When God would educate a man He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation.--Celia Burleigh.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.--Joubert.

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.--Tennyson.

~Neglect.~--He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.--Johnson.