He is a man of progressive ideas and unfolding nature. Sir Walter Scott
has put into words a thought that has ever had man's approbation:
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
"It is in sickness," says Hosea Ballou, "that we most feel the need of
that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for
our comfort and even necessities. This desire, opening our eyes to the
realities of life, is an indirect blessing." "Sickness," says Burton,
"puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in
the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear,
and brings us to a sense of our duty." "It is then," says Pliny, "that
man recollects there is a God, and that he himself is but a man. No
mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt."
"In sickness," says Shakspeare, playing with his prepositions, "let me
not so much say, 'Am I getting better of my pain?' as 'Am I getting
better for it?'"