As the animal dies of inanition if fed on but one kind of food,
however congenial, yet lives if he has all in succession, so is it
with complex man.
Learn retrenchment from the starving oyster, who spends his last
energies in a new pearly layer suited to his shrunken form.
As animals which have no organs of special sense know not light or
sound as we do, yet shrink from a hand or candle because their whole
bodies are dimly conscious, thus we have a glimmering perception of
infinite truths and existences which we cannot grasp or fully know
because our minds have no special organs for them.
The prick in the butterfly's wing will be in the full-grown insect a
great blemish. The speck in thy child's nature, if fondly overlooked
now, will become a wide rent traversing all his virtues.
As mineral poisons kill, because by their strong affinity they
decompose the blood and form new stony substances, so the soul
possessed by too strong an affinity for gold petrifies.
Our principles are central forces, our desires tangential; it requires
both to describe the curve of life.
The slightest inclination of a standing body virtually narrows its
base; the least departure from integrity lessens our foundation. The
pyramid, broad-based, yet heaven-pointed, is the firmest figure. Most
characters are inconsistent, unsymmetrical, and have a base wanting
extent in some direction.
Be not over-curious in assigning causes or predicting consequences;
the same diagonal may be formed by various combining forces.
Through water the musical sound is not transmitted, only the harsh
material noise. In air the noise is heard very near, the musical
sounds only are transmitted. Be thankful, poets and prophets, when you
live in an element such that your uncomely features are known only to
your own village.
"Do not sing its fundamental note too loud near a delicate glass, or
it will break," whispered my friend to me, as he saw me gazing at this
lovely being.
Seek the golden mean of life. Like the temperate regions, it has but
few thorny plants.
Be doubly careful of those to whom nature has been a niggard. The oak
and the palm take their own forms under all circumstances; the fungi
seem to owe theirs to outward influences.
It is a poor plant that crisps quickly into wood. It is a meagre
character which runs perpetually into prejudices.
As light suffers from no change of medium when it falls
perpendicularly, so the consequences of a perfectly upright action, or
cause of action, are strictly fortunate. But let it be ever so little
oblique, the new medium will exaggerate its obliquity; and the farther
it departs from uprightness, the more frightfully it is distorted.
Hoops and coins, which cannot preserve their equilibrium when in rest,
keep it when set in motion. Man also in activity finds his safest
position.
As it takes a diamond to cut and shape a diamond, so there are faults
so obstinate that they can be worn away only by life-long contact with
similar faults in those we love.
Learn the virtue of action. Who inquires whether momentum comes from
mass or velocity? But velocity has this advantage; it depends on
ourselves.
The grass is green after these October rains, because in the July
drought it struck deep roots.