In a world
You are
quiet.
but
in poetry.
full of
temporary things
a perpetual
feeling.
The saddest thing is to be
a minute to someone,
when you've made them your eternity.
My love
for you
will always be
like a mountain stream.
persistent.
continuous.
There is
something
mystically
sad
and beautiful
about
how
I will
never
see you
again
meet you
again
and again
Sanober Khan
Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Inside every adult is a vulnerable part that never really grows up. Most of us are too afraid of disapproval or rejection to express our deeper feelings. We worry that "if you knew all about me, you wouldn't like me". We're certain that others are happier, wiser, more fulfilled. We cannot risk being compared unfavorably. But withholding our emotions makes healthy communication impossible and creates distance in relationships. The part we hold back our authentic selves constitutes the very richness that others would find appealing. There is hidden power, and magnetism, in vulnerability and in the willingness to share deeper feelings, whether to express love or to acknowledge fears and needs.
The most difficult time to express vulnerability is when you're in love. Many are concerned about being too dependent on their partners for attention and love. They have a fear of appearing desperate or ridiculous. This is nonsense. Sharing with others how important they are to you makes them more loving and loyal, more thoughtful about your needs. When you are honest and open, you will find others inviting you into their private worlds. Think about the people you enjoy and admire. They are not superbeings. They err, they cry, they despair. They are real and vulnerable human beings.
Irene C. Kassorla
The farewell
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.
In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,
And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.
Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.
It was boundless in you;
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
Ay, you are like an ocean,
And like the seasons you are also,
Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
And in this lies my honour and my reward, -
And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness,
And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said,
And the flier was also the creeper;
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end,
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
Patient, over-patient, is the captain of my ship.
And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea,
What was given us here we shall keep,
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,we shall
Khalil Gibran
Excerpt from"the prophet"
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we
have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and
our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then
I will come again, And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again
will I seek your understanding. And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.
The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
And not unlike the mist have I been.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers.
And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;
He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast,
And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His mind binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean
by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast
blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency.
And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores,
yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And though in your winter you deny your spring,Yet spring,
reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.
Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other,
"He praised us well. He saw but the good in us."
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that
keeps records of our yesterdays,
And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself,
And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion,
I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look
well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children
dancing hand in hand. Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your
faith you have given but riches and power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me.
You have given me deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns
all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts.
To proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among the hill when you would have had me sit at your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple where you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you give at all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And you have said, "He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men.
He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city."
True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net,
And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench
your thirst with our wine."
In the solitude of their souls they said these things;
But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought
but the secret of your joy and your pain,
And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky.
But the hunter was also the hunted:
For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast.
For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow
upon the earth was a turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter;
For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have
the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you.
And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say,
You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth
or digs holes into darkness for safety,
But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether.
If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
This would I have you remember in remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is
the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that building your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things he looked about him, and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
And he said:
The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.
they too have heard me patiently. Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready.
The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother
holds her son against her breast.
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and
together stretch our hands unto the giver.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your
longings have built a tower in the sky.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned
to fuller day, and we must part.
speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall
build another tower in the sky.
Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable - that is, human - men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.
Alan Wilson Watts
A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that life is two locked boxes
each containing the other's key.
Piet Hein
Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract.
What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth.
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it.
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their "agreement," as falsity means their disagreement, with "reality".
A new opinion counts as "true" just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock.
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is "true" so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives.
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?”
Happiness is to feel one’s soul good; there is really no other, and one may have this happiness even in sorrow: hence there are some griefs that are preferable to any joy, and that would be preferred by all who have felt them.
Joseph Joubert
Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
but is, when unadorned, adorned the most.
James Thomson
Excerpt: Homer, The Odyssey
(Introductory Note: The Odyssey is an ancient epic poem attributed to Homer. Odysseus, “the man of many wiles”, was a mythical hero of ancient Greek civilization. The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to get back to his home in Ithaca after the Trojan War. In this section Odysseus has been shipwrecked onto the island Ogygia where the goddess Calypso lives. Calypso has kept Odysseus there for 7 years, offering to make Odysseus immortal if he will stay and become her husband. But Calypso’s offer of immortality is hardly a temptation for Odysseus, who lives as a prisoner on her island. He spends his days sitting by the sea weeping for his homeland and his family, especially his wife Penelope. Finally Calypso is commanded by the more powerful god Zeus to set Odysseus free. Calypso is addressing Odysseus at the beginning of this passage.)
‘Are you, Odysseus, man of many wiles,
Odysseus, man of many wiles, replied:
Laertes’ godly son, still keen to leave
straightway? Is it your native land you need,
your dear home? Though you go, I wish you well.
But if your mind were to divine the trials
that fate will have you meet before you reach
your country, you would choose to stay, to keep
this house with me—and live immortally.
This you would do despite your longing for
your wife, for whom you yearn each day. And yet
I’m sure that I am not inferior
to her in form or stature: it’s not right
for mortal women to contend or vie
with goddesses in loveliness or height.’
‘Great goddess, don’t be angered over this.
I’m well aware that you are right: I, too,
know that Penelope, however wise,
cannot compete with you in grace or stature:
she is not more than mortal, whereas you
are deathless, ageless. Even so, each day
I hope and hunger for my house: I long
to see the day of my returning home.
If once again, upon the winedark sea,
a god attacks, I shall survive that loss:
the heart within my chest is used to patience.
I’ve suffered much and labored much in many
ordeals among the waves and in the wars;
to those afflictions I can add one more.’
Where thou perceivest knowledge, bend the ear of attention and respect;
But yield not further to the teaching,than as thy mind is warranted by reasons.
Better is an obstinant disputant, that yieldeth inch by inch,
Than the shallow traitor to himself, who surrendereth to half an argument.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, Proverbial Philosophy
Do They Think of Me at Home?
When sunset tints the western skies
Do they think of me when morning
Do they think of me in winter,
Oft I sit beside my window,
Martha Lavinia Hoffman
With evening's roseate flush,
When the woodlands lie in shadows
In the twilight's deepening hush;
When the shadows lengthen round the
Lowly cot and stately dome,
When the toilsome day is over,
Do they think of me at home?
Calls from slumber to awake,
When the lark is skimming gaily
O'er the bosom of the lake,
When the meadows lie serenely
'Neath the blue ethereal skies;
And the saucy sprightly bluejay
Wakes the forest with his cries?
Do they think of me and miss me,
In the noontide's glowing heat,
When the cottage echoes gaily
To the tread of little feet;
When the oriole and warbler
Sing their merry roundelay;
Do they think of me and miss me
In the busy, bustling day?
When the falling of the rain
Makes a pattering on the shingles,
Trickles down the window-pain;
When the low night-winds are whispering,
Like some far-off mournful lyre,
When they gather in the evening,
'Round a brightly glowing fire?
When the children's merry laughter
Makes the cozy home-nest ring;
Do they think of me, I wonder,
When the evening songs they sing?
What is sweeter than that music,
When their childish voices raise
In their songs of flowers and fancies,
In their songs of prayer and praise.
When the day's long march is o'er,
When the waves are slowly creeping
O'er the distant ocean's shore;
And I wonder as I sit there,
In the twilight, all alone,
Do they pause amid life's bustle
To think of me at home?
Home
The greatest words are always solitaires,
To make a home, we should take all of love
Make ample room for silent friends--the books,
Here bring your best in thought and word and deed,
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Set singly in one syllable; like birth,
Life, love, hope, peace. I sing the worth
Of that dear word toward which the whole world fares -
I sing of home.
And much of labour, patience, and keen joy;
Then mix the elements of earth's alloy
With finer things drawn from the realms above,
The spirit home.
There should be music, melody and song;
Beauty in every spot; an open door
And generous sharing of the pleasure store
With fellow-pilgrims as they pass along,
Seeking for home.
That give so much and only ask for space.
Nor let Utility crowd out the vase
Which has no use save gracing by its looks
The precious home.
To narrow bounds let mirrors lend their aid
And multiply each gracious touch of art;
And let the casual stranger feel the part -
The great creative part--that love has played
Within the home.
Your sweetest acts, your highest self-control;
Nor save them for some later hour and goal.
Here is the place, and now the time of need,
Here in your home.
And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you
have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and
you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Kahlil Gibran
Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle
If one by one we counted people out
by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled
is made clean again.
Dag Hammarskjöld
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Robert Frost
The finest qualities of our nature,
Yet we do not treat ourselves
like the bloom on fruits,
can be preserved only by the most
delicate handling.
nor one another
thus tenderly.
Henry David Thoreau,Walden
Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves,
should not know conventional, delimited forms.
Anton chekhov
The tears of the world are a constant quantity.For each one who begins
to weep somewhere else another stops.The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Certitude is not the test of certainty.
We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of
spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the
woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been
sleeping among those who seek the tranquility
of the world with their snoring.
Writers and poets try to understand the truth about
O Woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men;
O woman! in ordinary cases so mere a mortal, how,
The world was sad!—the garden was a wild!
To describe women, the pen should be dipped
God has placed the genius of women in their hearts,
woman. But until this day they have never understood
her heart because, looking upon her through the veil
of desire, they see nothing except the shape of her body.
Or they look upon her through a magnifying glass
of spite and find nothing in her but weakness and submission.
Khalil Gibran
The very first
Of human life must spring from woman’s breast:
Your first small words are taught you from her lips;
Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs
Too often breath’d out in a woman’s hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.
Lord Byron
these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts.
Poets are weaving for you a web
with threads of golden imagery;
painters are giving your form ever
new immortality.
The sea gives its pearls, the mines
their gold,
the summer gardens their flowers to deck you,
to cover you, to make you more precious.
You are one-half woman and one-half dream.
Rabindranath Tagore
in the great and
rare events of life, dost thou swell into the angel!
Bulwer-Lytton.
On one she smiled, and he was blest;
She smiles elsewhere—we make a din!
But ’twas not love which heaved her breast,
Fair child!—it was the bliss within.
Matthew Arnold
And man, the hermit, sigh’d—till woman smiled.
Thomas Campbell
in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with
the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
Diderot
because the works of this genius are always works of love.
Alphonse de Lamartine
The Price of Experience
"What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song?
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
"How is it we have walk'd through fires and yet are not consum'd?
The Four Zoas (Excerpt)
Poem by William Blake
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs.
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field,
and
the sickness that cuts off his children,
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door,
and
our children bring fruits and flowers.
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me."
"Compel the poor to live upon a crust of bread, by soft mild arts.
Smile when they frown, frown when they smile; and when a man looks pale
With labour and abstinence, say he looks healthy and happy;
And when his children sicken, let them die; there are enough
Born, even too many, and our earth will be overrun
Without these arts. If you would make the poor live with temper,
With pomp give every crust of bread you give; with gracious cunning
Magnify small gifts; reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp.
Say he smiles if you hear him sigh. If pale, say he is ruddy.
Preach temperance: say he is overgorg'd and drowns his wit
In strong drink, though you know that bread and water are all
He can afford. Flatter his wife, pity his children, till we can
Reduce all to our will, as spaniels are taught with art."
the sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning,
And the mild moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night,
And Man walks forth from midst of the fires: the evil is all consum'd.
His eyes behold the Angelic spheres arising night and day;
the stars consum'd like a lamp blown out, and in their stead, behold
The expanding eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds!
One Earth, one sea beneath; nor erring globes wander, but stars
Of fire rise up nightly from the ocean; and one sun
Each morning, like a new born man, issues with songs and joy
Calling the Plowman to his labour and the Shepherd to his rest.
He walks upon the Eternal Mountains, raising his heavenly voice,
Conversing with the animal forms of wisdom night and day,
That, risen from the sea of fire, renew'd walk o'er the Earth;
For Tharmas brought his flocks upon the hills, and in the vales
Around the Eternal Man's bright tent, the little children play
the woolly flocks. The hammer of Urthona sounds
In the deep caves beneath; his limbs renew'd, his Lions roar
Around the Furnaces and in evening sport upon the plains.
They raise their faces from the earth, conversing with the Man:
How is it that all things are chang'd, even as in ancient times?"
The Master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist.
Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend.
Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself.
The deity is within you, not in ideas and books.
Truth is lived, not taught".
Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
When I would know thee * * * my thought looks
Upon thy well-made choice of friends and books;
Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends
In making thy friends books, and thy books friends.
Ben Jonson
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
William Shakespeare,Sonnet XXIII
Have a Flower in Your Room
How beautiful and yet how cheap are flowers. The "laughing flowers," exclaims the poet! But there is more than gaiety in blooming flowers, though it takes a wise man to see the beauty, the love, and the adaptation, of which they are full.
The heart that does not love flowers, or the voice of a playful child, cannot be genial. It was a beautiful conceit that invented a language of flowers, by which lovers were enabled to express the feelings that they dared not openly speak. But flowers have a voice for all,—old and young, rich and poor. "To me," says Wordsworth,
"The meanest flower that blows can give
A FIRE in winter, a flower in summer! If you can have a fine print or picture all the year round, so much the better; you will thus always have a bit of sunshine in your room, whether the sky be clear or not. But, above all, a flower in summer!
T.S. Arthur
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
Have a flower in the room, by all means! It will cost only a penny, if your ambition is moderate; and the gratification it gives will be beyond price. If you can have a flower for your window so much the better. What can be more delicious than the sun's light streaming through flowers—through the midst of crimson fuchsias or scarlet geraniums? To look out into the light through flowers—is not that poetry? And to break the force of the sunbeams by the tender resistance of green leaves? If you can train a nasturtium round the window, or some sweet peas, then you will have the most beautiful frame you can invent for the picture without, whether it be the busy crowd, or a distant landscape, or trees with their lights and shades, or the changes of the passing clouds.
Any one may thus look through flowers for the price of an old song. And what pure taste and refinement does it not indicate on the part of the cultivator! A flower in the window sweetens the air, makes the room look graceful, gives the sun's light a new charm, rejoices the eye, and links nature with beauty. The flower is a companion that will never say a cross thing to any one, but will always look beautiful and smiling. Do not despise it because it is cheap, and because everybody may have the luxury as well as yourself. Common things are cheap, but common things are invariably the most valuable. Could we only have fresh air or sunshine by purchase, what luxuries they would be considered; but they are free to all, and we think little of their blessings.
There is, indeed, much in nature that we do not yet half enjoy, because we shut our avenues of sensation and feeling. We are satisfied with the matter of fact, and look not for the spirit of fact, which is above it. If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower. We want more loving knowledge to enable us to enjoy life, and we require to cultivate the art of making the most of the common means and appliances for enjoyment, which lie about us on every side.
A snug and a clean home, no matter how tiny it be, so that it be wholesome; windows into which the sun can shine cheerily; a few good books (and who need be without a few good books in these days of universal cheapness?)—no duns at the door, and the cupboard well supplied, and with a flower in your room! There is none so poor as not to have about him these elements of pleasure.
