306
The secret places in the way of life may not and cannot be revealed:
there are rocks of offence on which every traveller must stumble. But
the poet points to where they are.
307
It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of
this world were foolishness with God.
308
The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it
through its manifestations.
309
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and
draws near the master.
310
In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing up the fire, and taking
the dross from the bar. As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and
pressed, and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh water. The same
thing happens to a man at the hands of his teacher.
311
What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it
away.
312
Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and
worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us;
and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything
that lies between these two is idolatry.
313
It is undeniable that in the Reformation the human mind tried to free
itself; and the renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity brought about
the wish and longing for a freer, more seemly, and elegant life. The
movement was favoured in no small degree by the fact that men's hearts
aimed at returning to a certain simple state of nature, while the
imagination sought to concentrate itself.
314
The Saints were all at once driven from heaven; and senses, thought, and
heart were turned from a divine mother with a tender child, to the grown
man doing good and suffering evil, who was later transfigured into a
being half-divine in its nature, and then recognised and honoured as God
himself. He stood against a background where the Creator had opened out
the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings
were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was the pledge of
everlastingness.
315
As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the
heart.
316
From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves
every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious
sense.
317
It should be our earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as
possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and reason.
It is an endeavour which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be
renewed.
Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task
than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere
make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better
than his method of expression.
False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others,
or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to
remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.
318
As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.
319
Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
320
A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.
321
Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the
exceptions, old people the rules.
322
It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise
man, but wisdom.
323
To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.
324
It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will,
we must also do.
325
Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities are never more than
curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of
moral and æsthetic culture they can help us little.
326
The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the
example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for
the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest
advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.
327
Even men of insight do not see that they try to explain things which lie
at the foundation of our experience, and in which we must simply
acquiesce.
Yet still the attempt may have its advantage, as otherwise we should
break off our researches too soon.
328
From this time forward, if a man does not apply himself to some art or
handiwork, he will be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the world,
knowledge is no longer a furtherance; by the time a man has taken note
of everything, he has lost himself.
329
Besides, in these days the world forces universal culture upon us, and
so we need not trouble ourselves further about it; we must appropriate
some particular culture.
330
The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.
331
Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.
332
Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.
333
_Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!_ This is so strange an utterance,
that it could only have come from one who fancied himself autochthonous.
The man who looks upon it as an honour to be descended from wise
ancestors, will allow them at least as much common-sense as he allows
himself.
334
Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man's intentions; where
these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the
thoughts.
335
If a man lives long in a high position, he does not, it is true,
experience all that a man can experience; but he experiences things like
them, and perhaps some things that have no parallel elsewhere.