The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature, were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
Some critics are like chimneysweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from the nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing out from the top of the house, as if they had built it.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea.
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where.