Moncure Daniel Conway

“ Yet will not the heart be bereaved of its vision; it still sees a smile of tenderness in the universe. And philosophy, though it regard that smile as a reflection of the heart’s own love, may with all the more certainty itself find a religion in this maternal divinity in the earth, ever aspiring to its own supreme humanity.
Solomon passes, Jesus passes, but the Wisdom they loved as Bride, as Mother, abides, however veiled in fables. She is still inspiring the unfinished work of creation, and her delight is with the children of men. ”

“ It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep; but the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary as themselves, to be the shelter always open to good and true persons—a hall which shines with sincerity, brows ever tranquil, and a demeanor impossible to disconcert; whose inmates know what they want; who do not ask your house how theirs shall be kept. ”

“ What kind of office must that be in a government which requires neither experience nor ability to execute? that may be abandoned to the desperate chance of birth, that may be filled with an idiot, a madman, a tyrant, with equal effect as by the good, the virtuous, and the wise? An office of this nature is a mere nonentity: it is a place of show, not of use. Let France then, arrived at the age of reason, no longer be deluded by the sound of words, and let her deliberately examine, if a King, however insignificant and contemptible in himself, may not at the same time be extremely dangerous. ”

“ Yes, worse: for all that man ever won of courage or moral freedom, by conquering his dragons in detail, he surrenders again to the phantom-forces they typified when he gives up his mind to belief in a power not himself that makes for evil. The terrible conclusion that Evil is a positive and imperishable Principle in the universe carries in it the poisonous breath of every Dragon. It lurks in all theology which represents the universe as an arena of struggle between good and evil Principles, and human life as a war of the soul against the flesh. ”

“ Despite his proverb, man has painted the lily and adorned the rose, until we may almost say with the Persian Nizámi, “Every flower growing in the many-colored garden of the earth is a drop of blood from the heart of a man.” Out of a dry and hard necessity comes still the beauty of the world. Behind our tinted Salviati glass, our painted Sèvres china and Minton majolica and shining silver plate, are the long rows of pallid faces inhaling poison in stifling rooms, breathing death that they may live. Sad experience is the prelude to each charming symphony. ”

“ Come, Sir, and enjoy in France the most interesting of scenes for an observer and a philosopher,—that of a confiding and generous people who, infamously betrayed for three years, and wishing at last to end the struggle between slavery and liberty, between sincerity and perfidy, at length arises in its resolute and gigantic force, gives up to the sword of the law those guilty crowned things who betrayed them, resists the barbarians whom they raised up to destroy the nation. ”

“ I am no worshipper of Washington. But in the hand of that man of strong brain and powerful passions once lay the destiny of the New World,—in a sense, human destiny. But for his possession of the humility and self-discipline underlying his Rules of Civility, the ambitious politicians of the United States might to-day be popularly held to a much lower standard. The tone of his character was so entirely that of modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are popularly accounted successes. ”

“ No man wishes more heartily than myself to see them all in the happy and honorable state of private individuals; but I am the avowed, open, and intrepid enemy of what is called monarchy; and I am such by principles which nothing can either alter or corrupt—by my attachment to humanity; by the anxiety which I feel within myself for the dignity and honor of the human race; by the disgust which I experience when I observe men directed by children and governed by brutes; by the horror which all the evils that monarchy has spread over the earth excite within my breast ”

“ O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love—of uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against ‘principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’ ”

“ Nature shows no symbol of such power more complete than the gemmed serpent with its exquisite adaptations,—freed from cumbersome prosaic feet, equal to the winged by its flexible spine, every tooth artistic.
From an ancient prison was this Ariel liberated by his Prospero, whose wand was the Reformation, a spirit finely touched to fine issues. But his wings cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The ancient heaven has faded before the clearer eye, but the starry ideals have come nearer. ”

“ Never was more beauty wrought in iron than this by Huntington Shaw, of Nottingham, anno 1695. Under his hand rose, shamrock, and thistle have grown on the metal so tenderly that it would seem a breath might stir them, while from the Irish harp in the centre one might almost listen for Æolian strains. But that was done in a day when to work for a king was felt to be working for God. And all through this museum shines the great fact that the best work was never done merely for money, but for the altar, for love and loyalty. It is a Museum of Civilization, where each work is a heart. ”

“ It is not the liberty of France alone that I dream of; it is the liberty of the whole world. It is not the physical equality; it is equality before the law,—equality of rights. It is not only the fraternity of our own citizens, but of all nations.... Forward, then, and over the heaps of our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy here is in the advanced guard!"
Though Dr. Gilbert has been in the Bastille, though he barely escapes the bullet of a revolutionist, he tries to unite the throne and the people. ”

“ When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of nations of the ancient world, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship. But when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. ”

“ For Wisdom is more moving [122] than motion itself; she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God, and prophets. ”

“ Footless, wingless, as a star, its swift gliding and darting is sometimes like the lightning whose forked tongue it seemed to incarnate. The least touch of its ingenious tooth is more destructive than the lion’s jaw. What mystery in its longevity, in its self-subsistence, in its self-renovation! Out of the dark it comes arrayed in jewels, a crawling magazine of death in its ire, in its unknown purposes able to renew its youth, and fable for man imperishable life! ”

“ It is an apartment in which the finest company would feel itself in an atmosphere of refinement and taste, and it is a place to lose one’s self in a good book; it is a place where the mind can equally well find invitation to society or solitude. Perhaps it is the rich Persian carpet that gives such grace. It is after a pattern more than a thousand years old, but which in all that time has never repeated itself, each carpet coming forth with its own tints and shades, and in which every color is surrounded by a line which mediates between it and the next. ”

“ While dark superstition, with nature at strife, For ages had locked up the fountain of life; But the daemon is fled, the delusion is past, And reason and virtue have triumphed at last; Then seize the glad moments, and hail the decree, That tears off their chains, and bids millions be free. "France, we share in the rapture thy bosom that fills, While the Genius of Liberty bounds o'er thy hills: Redundant henceforth may thy purple juice flow, Prouder wave thy green woods, and thine olive trees grow! ”

“ Who can set before them, with all its baseness, the true emblem of pious fraud? When will they see in any stone mirror the real shape of a double-tongued Culture—one fork intoning litanies, another whispering contempt of them? The werewolves of scholarly selfishness, the Lamias of christian casuistry, the subtle intelligence that is fed by sages and heroes, but turns them to dust, nay, to venom, because it dares not be human, still crawls—these are yet to be revealed in all their horrors. ”