* Response to an invitation to a dinner and a billiard
tournament at the Manhattan Athletic Club, New York City.
Feby. 18, 1899.
My Dear Dr. Ranney:
I go to Boston to-morrow. So, you see it is impossible for me to be with
you on the 22d inst. I would like to make a few remarks on "orthodox
billiards." The fact is that the whole world is a table, we are the
balls and Fate plays the game. We are knocked and whacked against each
other,--followed and drawn--whirled and twisted, pocketed and spotted,
and all the time we think that we are doing the playing. But no matter,
we feel that we are in the game, and a real good illusion is, after all,
it may be, the only reality that we know. At the same time, I feel
that Fate is a careless player--that he is always a little nervous and
generally forgets to chalk his cue. I know that he has made lots of
mistakes with me--lots of misses.
With many thanks, I remain, yours always.
R. G. Ingersoll.
*****
THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS, 1891.--It is beautiful to give one day to the
ideal--to have one day apart; one day for generous deeds, for good will,
for gladness; one day to forget the shadows, the rains, the storms of
life; to remember the sunshine, the happiness of youth and health; one
day to forget the briers and thorns of the winding path, to remember the
fruits and flowers; one day in which to feed the hungry, to salute
the poor and lowly; one day to feel the brotherhood of man; one day
to remember the heroic and loving deeds of the dead; one day to get
acquainted with children, to remember the old, the unfortunate and the
imprisoned; one day in which to forget yourself and think lovingly of
others; one day for the family, for the fireside, for wife and children,
for the love and laughter, the joy and rapture, of home; one day in
which bonds and stocks and deeds and notes and interest and mortgages
and all kinds of business and trade are forgotten, and all stores and
shops and factories and offices and banks and ledgers and accounts and
lawsuits are cast aside, put away and locked up, and the weary heart and
brain are given a voyage to fairyland.
Let us hope that such a day is a prophecy of what all days will be.
*****
THE ORTHODOX PREACHERS are several centuries in the rear. They all love
the absurd, and glory in believing the impossible. They are also as
conservative as though they were dead--good people--the leaders of those
who are going backward.
*****
The Man who builds a home erects a temple.
The flame upon the hearth is the sacred fire.
He who loves wife and children is the true worshiper.
Forms and ceremonies, kneelings and fastings are born of selfish fear.
A good deed is the best prayer.
A loving life is the best religion.
No one knows whether the Unknown is worthy of worship or not.
*****
WE TWO, THE DOUBTING BRAIN AND HOPING HEART, with somber thought and
radiant wish, in dusk and dawn, in light and shade 'neath star and
sun, together journeying toward the night. And then the end, sighs the
doubting brain--but there is no end, says the hoping heart. O Brain! if
you knew, you would not doubt. O Heart! if you knew, you would not hope.
*****
RIGHTS AND DUTIES spring from the same source. He who has no rights
has no duties. Without liberty there can be no responsibility and no
conscience. Man calls himself to an account for the use of his power,
and passes judgment upon himself. The standard of such judgment we call
conscience. In the proportion that man uses his liberty, his power, for
the good of all, he advances, becomes civilized. Civilization does not
consist merely in invention, discovery, material advancement, but
in doing justice. By civilization is meant all discoveries, facts,
theories, agencies, that add to the happiness of man.
*****
AT BAY.--Sometimes in the darkness of night I feel as though surrounded
by the great armies of effacement--that the horizon is growing
smaller every moment--that the final surrender is only postponed--that
everything is taking something from me--that Nature robs me with her
countless hands--that my heart grows weaker with every beat--that even
kisses wear me away, and that every thought takes toll of my brief life.
*****
THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY.*--One year of perfect health--of countless
smiles--of wonder and surprise--of growing thought and love--was duly
celebrated on this day, and all paid tribute to the infant queen. There
were whirling things that scattered music as they turned--and boxes
filled with tunes--and curious animals of whittled wood--and ivory rings
with tinkling bells--and little dishes for a fairy-feast--horses that
rocked, and bleating sheep and monstrous elephants of painted tin. A
baby-tender, for a tender babe, garments of silk and cushions wrought
with flowers, and pictures of her mother when a babe--and silver dishes
for another year--and coach and four and train of cars--and bric-a-brac
for a baby's house--and last of all, a pearl, to mark her first round
year of life and love.
* Written on the first anniversary of his grandchild, Eva
Ingersoll-Brown, August 27, 1892.
*****
SHELLEY.--The light of morn beyond the purple hills--a palm that lifts
its coronet of leaves above the desert's sands--an isle of green in some
far sea--a spring that waits for lips of thirst--a strain of music heard
within some palace wrought of dreams--a cloud of gold above a setting
sun--a fragrance wafted from some unseen shore.
*****
FATE.--Never hurried, never delayed, passionless, pitiless, patient,
keeping the tryst--neither early nor late--there, on the very stroke and
center of the instant fixed.
*****
QUIET, and introspective calm come with the afternoon. Toward evening
the mind grows satisfied and still. The flare and flicker of youth are
gone, and the soul is like the flame of a lamp where the air is at rest.
Age discards the superfluous, the immaterial, the straw and chaff, and
hoards the golden grain. The highway is known, and the paths no longer
mislead. Clouds are not mistaken for mountains.
*****
THE OLD MAN has been long at the fair. He is acquainted with the
jugglers at the booths. His curiosity has been satisfied. He no longer
cares for the exceptional, the monstrous, the marvelous and deformed. He
looks through and beyond the gilding, the glitter and gloss, not only
of things, but of conduct, of manners, theories, religions and
philosophies. He sees clearer. The light no longer shines in his eyes.
*****
The time will come when even selfishness will be charitable for its own
sake, because at that time the man will have grown and developed to that
degree that selfishness demands generosity and kindness and justice. The
self becomes so noble that selfishness is a virtue. The lowest form of
selfishness is when one is willing to be happy, or wishes to be happy,
at the expense or the misery of another. The highest form of selfishness
is when a man becomes so noble that he finds his happiness in making
others so. This is the nobility of selfishness.
*****
CUBA fell upon her knees--stretched her thin hands toward the great
Republic. We saw her tear-filled eyes--her withered breasts--her dead
babes--her dying--her buried and unburied dead. We heard her voice, and
pity, roused to action by her grief, became as stern as justice, and
the great Republic cried to Spain: "Sheathe the dagger of assassination;
take your bloody hand from the throat of the helpless; and take your
flag from the heaven of the Western World."
*****
Perhaps I have reached the years of discretion. But it may be that
discretion is the enemy of happiness. If the buds had discretion there
might be no fruit. So it may be that the follies committed in the spring
give autumn the harvest.--August 11,1892.
*****
Dickens wrote for homes--Thackeray for clubs. Byron did not care for the
fireside--for the prattle of babes--for the smiles and tears of humble
life. He was touched by grandeur rather than goodness,--loved storm and
crag and the wild sea. But Burns lived in the valley, touched by the
joys and griefs of lowly lives.
Imagine amethysts, rubies, diamonds, emeralds and opals mingled as
liquids--then imagine these marvelous glories of light and color changed
to a tone, and you have the wondrous, the incomparable voice of Scalchi.
*****
THE ORGAN.--The beginnings--the timidities--the half
thoughts--blushes--suggestions--a phrase of grace and feeling--a
sustained note--the wing on the wind--confidence--the flight--rising
with many harmonies that unite in the voluptuous swell--in the
passionate tremor--rising still higher--flooding the great dome with the
soul of enraptured sound.
*****
NEW MEXICO is a most wonderful country. It is a ragged miser with
billions of buried treasure. It looks as if Nature had guarded her
silver and gold with enough desolation to deter all but the brave.
*****
WHY SHOULD THE INDIAN SUMMER of a life be lost--the long, serene, and
tender days when earth and sky are friends? The falling leaves disclose
the ripened fruit--and so the flight of youth with dreams and fancies
should show the wealth of bending bough.
*****
Give milk to babes, and wine to youth. But for old age, when ghosts
of more than two-score years are wandering on the traveled road, the
fragrant tea, that loosens gossip's tongue, is best.--December 25,1892.
[From a letter thanking a friend for a Christmas present of
a chest of tea.]
*****
ON MEMORIAL DAY our hearts blossom in gratitude as we lovingly remember
the brave men upon whose brows Death, with fleshless hands, placed the
laurel wreath of fame.
*****
THE SOUL IS AN ARCHITECt--it builds a habitation for itself--and as the
soul is, is the habitation. Some live in dens and caves, and some in
lowly homes made rich with love, and overrun with vine and flower.
*****
SCIENCE at last holds with honest hand the scales wherein are weighed
the facts and fictions of the world. She neither kneels nor prays, she
stands erect and thinks. Her tongue is not a traitor to her brain. Her
thought and speech agree.
*****
THE NEGRO who can pass me in the race of life will receive my
admiration, and he can count on my friendship. No man ever lived who
proved his superiority by trampling on the weak.
*****
RELIGION is like a palm tree--it grows at the top. The dead leaves are
all orthodox, while the new ones and the buds are all heretics.
*****
MEMORY is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.
*****
HOPE is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
*****
THE FIRES OF THE NEXT WORLD sustain the same relation to churches that
those in this world sustain to insurance companies.
*****
Now and then there arises a man who on peril's edge draws from the
scabbard of despair the sword of victory.
*****
The falling leaf that tells of autumn's death is, in a subtler sense, a
prophecy of spring.
*****
Vice lives either before Love is born, or after Love is dead.
*****
Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest.
*****
I believe that finally man will go through the phase of religion before
birth.
*****
When shrill chanticleer pierces the dull ear of morn.
*****
Orthodoxy is the refuge of mediocrity.
*****
The ocean is the womb of all that will be, the tomb of all that has
been.
*****
Jealousy never knows the value of a fact.
Envy cannot reason, malice cannot prophesy.
*****
Love has a kind of second sight.
*****
I have never given to any one a sketch of my life. According to my idea
a life should not be written until it has been lived.--July 1, 1888.