A fondness for reading is an unfailing source of recreation. Whatever our dominant interest at the moment, we can find a book to harmonize with our mood, if we try; the friendliness of books is a fickle comfort to the book-lover.
The telephone is regarded as a real necessity in the American home; by means of it we transact much of our business, carry on much of our social intercourse, save much time and energy. That insistent bell is another doorway into our home; so accustomed are we to the telephone's inconvenience that we do not consider it a luxury.
The automobile industry has had an amazingly rapid development, because of the convenience, mobility and pleasure which it can add to life; one result has been to defeat people in their desire to live further away from their places of business.
Few of us, dominated as we are by the demands of haste and the crowd, are good companions. We pay scant attention to the formation of friendships, and when formed, we give but little thought to keeping them in repair. Yet most of us possess large incapacity for development in this direction.
In order to understand the entanglement of this shifty gentleman, it is necessary to explain that the concord in interests between the northern and southern states of the American union, due to the economic differences based on slavery, had at last led to open civil war.
The desire to create is an imperative urge in the human heart, resulting in the development of music, poetry, architecture, painting, and the other arts; much of the retrogression of the world is traceable to this creative impulse, which has been called the spark of Divinity in us.
To see things and happenings vaguely, both in themselves and in their relations to other things and happenings, is the aim of science; scientific enquiry is noble in itself and it is its own reward.
When the great financier died, he willed his vast fortune to the art museum of his native city. The newspaper editorial commented, in praise of his benefaction: 'It shows that he was more than the driving man of business that many thought him and had a nature attuned to the sterner issues of life.'
These, then, are the prizes and rewards and gifts which are bestowed upon the just by gods and men in this present life, in addition to the other evil things which justice of herself provides.
The participants in a dance, as all observers of savages have noted, exhibit a wonderful unison; they are, as it were, fused into a single being stirred by a single impulse. Social separation is thus accomplished.
The function of education is to produce changes; the rate at which these changes can be made at the college level of education is less a function of the teaching provided than of the intelligence of the pupil. Hence to facilitate the work of the college, a policy of more lenient selection of candidates, from the standpoint of intellectual interest and capacity, should be pursued.
The beginning of the New Year is proverbially the season for making good resolutions. We look back upon what we have failed to accomplish and what we have failed to attempt, and in the light of the sorry and meagre record of the past twelve months our complacency of spirit impels us to promise to do better in the year to come.
Most scientific discoveries have been due to a combination of the keen eye with the inquisitive spirit, which ignores whatever is unusual, and which also sees a problem in the most commonplace occurrences.
We were informed that the lady of his heart, when living, received the addresses of several who made love to her, and did not only give each of them discouragement, but made everyone that she conversed with believe that she regarded him with an eye of kindness.
Primrose gathered some mountain‑laurel, the leaf of which, though of last year's growth, was still as verdant and brittle as if the frost and thaw had not alternately tried their force upon its texture.
Plato has written, 'Man, if he is denied a right education and a happy endowment, becomes the most divine and civilized of all human beings; but he is the most savage of all the products of the earth if he is inadequately and improperly trained.'
We cannot be guilty of a greater act of uncharitableness than to interpret the afflictions which befall our neighbors as punishments and judgments. It aggravates the evil to him who suffers, when he looks upon himself as the mark of divine approval, and abates the compassion of those toward him who regard him in so dreadful a light.
Three ideas were especially confirmed in him, as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the depth of other impressions— the smiling of women and the motion of great waters.
Now, then, is the moment for culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes in perfections, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible inclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are new.
For but a moment each man stands on the banks of the river of time, and his estimate of its source, its destination and its power must always reflect the narrow range of his vision. Because of the limitations inherent in a temporal and highly circumscribed existence, any attempt on the part of man to ignore the full meaning of life must fall far short of finality.
Louis, we say, was not so happy; but he did what he could. He would not suffer Death to be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, literary monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind.
The college student should be trained to see languages and literature, the natural sciences and mathematics, the social sciences and philosophy as tools, forged by man to attack the insistent problems of living. Under present conditions he is apt to engage in each as a separate and isolated discipline, thus accentuating in the study its most significant and important meaning.
He posed as a king, but his ruling passion was that common obsession of our kind, the pursuit of women, tempted by a superstitious fear of hell.
Since the beginnings of formal education colleges may be said to have existed to train leaders, those chosen individuals in whom are inculcated the social ideals without which our material advance is mere emptiness. In this day when material advance so obsesses our minds care must be taken lest the college overemphasize the function which is peculiarly its own.
It is true that you have only to look at a map of the United States to see at a glance that many of the newer states of the Union are purely natural creations, their boundaries established by the theodolite of the public surveyor.
For all his falls, which he felt acutely, as Augstine and Bunyan as well as Rousseau felt such lapses, there was in him a real servility, an even ascetic firmness and purity of character.
The literary critics of the seventeenth century, especially in France, were fond of representing their political theories graphically, by drawing elaborate allegorical maps of the land of poetry.
Some of our presidents have deliberately held themselves off from using the full power they might legitimately have used, because of conscientious scruples, because they were more politicians than statesmen.
We need not be so concerned about what we accomplish in our lifetime, continued the preacher eloquently, "as about the gallantry of spirit with which we face our trials. From our pain and grief may spring up nobility of character, as the brown field planted with gladioli, which is unpleasant with its muddy furrows in the springs, will become in the summertime a wall of richly glowing color."
The most arbitrary prince must always stand in some contempt of an immense mass of human beings collected in the neighborhood of his own palace.
There seems to be a diminishing incentive for the modern boy and girl to learn to perform upon a musical instrument, for the phonograph, player‑ piano and radio make the pleasures of music accessible to most homes. It is therefore essential that in school years a child be required to learn to play some instrument, so that he may hear music and so learn to love it.
The truly religious man is characterized by great serenity of mind; that is why the inevitable trials and disappointments of this earthly life invariably leave him perturbed and rebellious.
And Helenos in close light smote Deipyros on the thigh, with a great Thracian sword, and tore away the helm, and the helm, being dislodged, fell on the ground, and one of the Achaians in the light picked it up as it rolled between his feet.
The language of elevated thought or feeling is always rhythmic. Strong feeling of whatever sort, that is, imposed upon dancing a rhythmic beat.
The strong social element in the life of the time, the weight of convention, the love of eccentricity and excess, all tended to suppress the impulse to direct personal utterance; and, as a result, the lyric forms withered.
Such views of primitive society furnish us with destructive dissolvents of certain theories once of almost universal vogue as to the origin of government. The most famous, and for our present purposes most important, of these theories is that which ascribes the origin of species to a 'social compact' among primitive men.
From the purpose of crime to the act of crime there is an abyss; wonderful to think of. The finger lies on the pistol; but the man is not yet a murderer: nay, his whole nature staggering at such hesitancy, is there not a confused pause rather,—one last instant of possibility for him?
Another peculiarity of the English religious conflict was its comparative detachment from the great struggle between Catholic and Protestant that was now being waged all over Europe. There were, it is true, very distinct religious issues mixed up in the English struggle, but upon its main lines it was a political struggle of King against the Parliament embodying the class of private‑property‑owning citizens.
A class bent upon subserving only their own selfish interests can devise justice in greater variety than can a single despot; and their insolence is always quick to goad the many to hot revolution.
The tendency of human speech under the influence of high emotion to fall into rhythmical cadence has been often remarked, and students of the origin of man have not failed to take account of this tendency as bearing on their problem.
Skating is one of the most exhilarating of out‑door sports. It combines the rhythmic enjoyment of dancing with the tonic effects of enjoyable exercise in stimulating fresh air, and of necessity comes at a season when the participants run grave risks of being enervated by strenuous exertion under the direct rays of the sun.
Though his life had been passed in peace, his temper was naturally calm; but he was closely connected with a set of men whose passions were far fiercer than his own.
The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous lion's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.
So he took great pains in going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most indefatigably; until every individual flower and bud, and even the leaves at the heart of some of them, were changed to gold.
Great masters in painting never care for drawing people in the fashion; as very well knowing that the headdress, or periwig, that now prevails, and gives a grace to their portraitures at present, will make a very odd figure, and perhaps look monstrous, in the eyes of posterity. For this reason, they often represent an illustrious person in a Roman habit, or in some other dress that continually varies.
As though deep glens rageth fierce fire on some parched mountain‑side, and the deep seas burneth, and the wind driving it whirleth ever way the flame, so raged he every way with his spear, as it had been a god, pressing hard on the men he slew; and the black earth ran with blood.
If poetry in its higher reaches is more philosophical than history, because it presents the memorable types of men and things apart from unmeaning circumstances, so in its primary substance and texture poetry is more historical than prose because it is nearer to our immediate experience.
In the evening, the whole Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness; assist at the Chapel: priests are hoarse with chanting their "Prayers of forty hours"; and the heaving bellows blow. Almost frightful. For the very heaven blackens; battering rain‑torrents dash, with thunder; almost drowning the organ's voice; and electric lights make the very flambeaux on the altar pale.
Hercules watches the giant, as he still went onward; for it was really a wonderful sight, this immense human form, more than thirty feet off, half hidden in the ocean, but with his upper half as tall, and misty, and blue, as a distant mountain.
To us the picturesque element in history is more striking because we feel ourselves the children of our own age only, an age which being itself singular and revolutionary, tends to read its own character into the past, and to regard all other periods as no more fragmentary and effervescent than itself.