William Holmes McGuffey

“ As the clouds gathered, and the darkness increased, the father and the neighbors, with highly excited fears, traversed the woods in all directions, and raised loud shouts to attract the attention of the child. But their search was in vain. They could find no trace of the wanderer; and, as they stood under the boughs of the lofty trees, and listened, that if possible they might hear his feeble voice, no sound was borne to their ears but the melancholy moaning of the wind as it swept through the thick branches of the forest. ”

“ O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers; the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. ”

“ The most calamitous events, either to themselves or others, can bring no new affliction; the world is to them a theater, in which only comedies are acted. All the bustle of heroism, or the aspirations of ambition, seem only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humor more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sorrow at a funeral. ”

“ Here, under a bright sun, such as shone at Austerlitz or Buena Vista—amidst the peaceful harmonies of nature—on the Sabbath of peace—we behold bands of brothers, children of a common Father, heirs to a common happiness, struggling together in the deadly fight, with the madness of fallen spirits, seeking with murderous weapons the lives of brothers who have never injured them or their kindred. The havoc rages. The ground is soaked with their commingling blood. The air is rent by their commingling cries. Horse and rider are stretched together on the earth. ”

“ The mother can not feel for her child that is lost as God feels for the unhappy wanderer in the paths of sin. If a mother can feel so much, what must be the feelings of our Father in heaven for those who have strayed from his love? If man can feel so deep a sympathy, what must be the emotions which glow in the bosom of angels? ”

“ Genius, unexerted, is like the poor moth that flutters around a candle till it scorches itself to death. If genius be desirable at all, it is only of that great and magnanimous kind, which, like the condor of South America, pitches from the summit of Chimborazo, above the clouds, and sustains itself at pleasure in that empyreal region with an energy rather invigorated than weakened by the effort. ”

“ What a practical philosopher was here! A happy constitution supplied philosophy, and though seemingly destitute of wisdom he was really wise. No reading or study had contributed to disenchant the fairyland around him. Everything furnished him with an opportunity of mirth; and though some thought him, from his insensibility, a fool, he was such an idiot as philosophers should wish to imitate.
They who, like that slave, can place themselves all that side of the world in which everything appears in a pleasant light, will find something in every occurrence to excite their good humor. ”

“ Or redeem form or fame from the merciless surge;
But the white foam of waves shall thy winding sheet be,
And winds in the midnight of winter thy dirge.
13. On a bed of green sea flowers thy limbs shall be laid,—
Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow;
Of thy fair yellow locks threads of amber be made,
And every part suit to thy mansion below.
14. Days, months, years, and ages shall circle away,
And still the vast waters above thee shall roll;
Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye;
O sailor boy! sailor boy! peace to thy soul! ”

“ At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder,
A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep,
I am fall'n indeed.
Crom. How does your grace?
Wol. Why, well;
Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.
I know myself now; and I fed within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me,
I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders,
These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken
A load would sink a navy!—too much honor:
Oh, 't is a burthen, Cromwell, 'tis a burthen,
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven! ”

“ Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or security to his own life and his own honor! Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague, near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? ”

“ I am aware that our ablest patriots are looking out on the deep, vexed with storms, with great forebodings and failings of heart, for fear of the things that are coming upon us; and I perceive a spirit of impatience rising, and distrust in respect to the perpetuity of our republic; and I am sure that these fears are well founded, and am glad that they exist. It is the star of hope in our dark horizon. Fear is what we need, as the ship needs wind on a rocking sea, after a storm, to prevent foundering. But when our fear and our efforts shall correspond with our danger, the danger is past. ”

“ Oh that men would praise the Lord' for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble; they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. ”

“ Poor child! that flexible clay of which these old brothers molded their admirable symbols was not Persian, nor Memphian, nor Teutonic, nor local at all, but was common lime and silex and water, and sunlight, the heat of the blood, and the heaving of the lungs; it was that clay which thou heldest but now in thy foolish hands, and threwest away to go and seek in vain in sepulchers, mummy pits, and old bookshops of Asia Minor, Egypt, and England. It was the deep to-day which all men scorn; the rich poverty, which men hate; the populous, all-loving solitude, which men quit for the tattle of towns. ”

“ Dolph gazed about him, in mute delight and wonder, at these scenes of nature's magnificence. To the left, the Dunderberg reared its woody precipices, height over height, forest over forest, away into the deep summer sky. To the right, strutted forth the bold promontory of Antony's Nose, with a solitary eagle wheeling about it; while beyond, mountain succeeded to mountain, until they seemed to lock their arms together and confine this mighty rive in their embraces. ”

“ President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. She needs none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. And, sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it ”

“ Day dawned upon Granada, and the beams of the winter sun, smiling away the clouds of the past night, played cheerily on the murmuring waves of the Xenil and the Darro. Alone, upon a balcony commanding a view of the beautiful landscape, stood Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings. He had sought to bring to his aid all the lessons of the philosophy he had cultivated.
"What are we," thought the musing prince, "that we should fill the world with ourselves—we kings? Earth resounds with the crash of my falling throne; on the ear of races unborn the echo will live prolonged. ”

“ Have I been idle, or have I nothing to show for all my labor and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them? Is there no one thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, in which others can not find a flaw? ”

“ Take them to the bar, and let them shake their learned curls at each other in legal rivalry; talent sees its way clearly, but tact is first at its journey's end. Talent has many a compliment from the bench, but tact touches fees. Talent makes the world wonder that it gets on no faster, tact arouses astonishment that it gets on so fast. And the secret is, that it has no weight to carry; it makes no false steps; it hits the right nail on the head; it loses no time; it takes all hints; and, by keeping its eye on the weathercock, is ready to take advantage of every wind that blows. ”

“ Ah! poor dupe, will you never slip out of the web of the master juggler?—never learn that, as soon as the irrecoverable years have woven their blue glory between to-day and us, these passing hours shall glitter and draw us, as the wildest romance and the homes of beauty and poetry? How difficult to deal erect with them! The events they bring, their trade, entertainments, and gossip, their urgent work, all throw dust in the eyes and distract attention. ”

“ Let them foretell the path of the whirlwind, and calculate the orbit of the storm. Let them hang out their gigantic pendulums, and make the earth do the work of describing and measuring her own motions.
Let them annihilate human pain, and literally "charm ache with air, and agony with ether." The blessing of God will attend all their toils, and the gratitude of man will await all their triumphs. Let them dig down into the bowels of the earth. Let them rive asunder the massive rocks, and unfold the history of creation as it lies written on the pages of their piled up strata. ”

“ No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights: and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? ”

“ The machine rocks and creaks in all its joints. There comes a tremendous shock. The cabin is as dark as midnight. The clouds of flying snow put out the day. The labored breathing of the locomotives behind you, the clouds of smoke and steam that wrap you up as in a mantle, the noonday eclipse of the sun, the surging of the ship, the rattling of chains, the creak of timbers as if the craft were aground and the sea getting out of its bed to whelm you altogether, the doubt as to what will come,—all combine to make a scene of strange excitement for a landlubber. ”