~Naivete.~--Naivete 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 AEsop'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._