Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collaps...e with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's orde...r in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order ...and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others di...e, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And would you be a poet Before you've been to school?... Ah, well! I hardly thought you So absolute a fool. First learn to be spasmodic-- A very simple rule. For first you write a sentence, And then you chop it small; Then mix the bits, and sort them out Just as they chance to fall: The order of the phrases makes No difference at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men an...d women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I claim ... that there is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth ...That as the man is more noble in reason, so the woman... is more quick in sympathy. That as he is indefatigable in pursuit of abstract truth, so is she in caring for the interests by the way--striving tenderly and lovingly that not one of the least of these "little ones" should perish. That while we not unfrequently see women who reason, we say, with the coolness and precision of a man, and men as considerate of helplessness as a woman, still there is a general consensus of mankind that the one trait is essentially masculine and the other as peculiarly feminine. That both are needed to be worked into the training of children, in order that our boys may supplement their virility by tenderness and sensibility, and our girls may round out their gentleness by strength and self-reliance. That, as both are alike necessary in giving symmetry to the individual, so a nation or a race will degenerate into mere emotionalism on the one hand, or ballism on the other, if dominated by either exclusively; lastly, and most emphatically, that the feminine factor can have its proper effect only through woman's development and education so that she may fitly and intelligently stamp her force on the forces of her day, and add her modicum to the riches of the world's thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all ci...vil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover in their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandston...e and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,--here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to kn...ow why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »