Chautauqua Institution

“ During this gloomy period the ground goes on, from hour to hour, scattering more and more of its heat, until it is almost as cold as the chill space in which the great world is poised, and has indeed more than 100 degrees of frost. The land and the water alike get covered up by one broad and thick sheet of never-melting ice and snow. There is not a leaf, or a grass blade, or a vegetable stalk any where in the wide white desolation. But there are animals and human beings, who are born and die, who maintain a prolonged existence in it. ”

“ It is an immeasurable mischief to our aspiring young men in the law, in politics, in journalism, in literature, to think, as they have been misled to think, that they have Webster for example in joining to brilliant gifts of intellect, dissoluteness of moral character. Such a false impression on the part of our young men works a harm to them that it is impossible to calculate. It is an impression with them, and it is a false impression. We shall be doing our generation a true service to take away Webster from among the splendid lures that draw our young men into looseness of life. ”

“ Art is not always to seek for the beautiful. A widow in her weeds is as fine a model as a bride in her orange blossoms. Lay on the color as nature has laid it on—rough and coarse if you find it so. Draw the figure large, gross, and rude, if in so doing you can emancipate yourself from conventionalism. By force of refinement art perishes, like society. It must be refreshed once in a while by a return to barbarism!” Gussow’s pictures are like bold statements and frank confessions, and a better teacher for shrinking, undecided talent, either in man or woman, is not to be found. ”

“ Not that a splendid train is essential to happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard change, from commanding millions to be without one attendant: and it was the ingratitude in his daughters denying it, more than what he would suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to the heart: insomuch that with this double ill-usage, and vexation for having so foolishly given away a kingdom, his wits began to be unsettled, and while he said he knew not what, he vowed revenge against those unnatural hags, and to make examples of them that should be a terror to the earth! ”

“ Even the greatest genius would make but little way if he were to create and construct everything out of his own mind. The world influences us at each step. The artist who merely walks through a room and casts a glance at the pictures, goes away a wiser man, and has learnt something from others. My works spring not from my own wisdom alone, but from hundreds of things and persons that gave the matter for them. ”

“ I offer this suggestion to you and I ask that on Sabbath afternoons, at such times as the thought comes to you, you ask God’s blessing on all the other members of the Circle, rich and poor, high and low, at home and abroad, young and old, in health or sickness, in prosperity or in adversity. The wide thought will broaden you and lift you up, for a broad thought that has heart in it is a broadening thought. Let us seek such culture, culture of the heart and brain together, as we lift both heart and brain to God in the interest of others. ”

“ Nor must it be forgotten that it is not one part only of man’s education that is to be considered, but every part. Everything that happens to us, everything that affects us, from the first dawn of our existence, is part of our education. When the Queen and Prince Albert were taking counsel together about the education of their children, a sagacious friend whom they consulted, to their surprise insisted strongly on this point, that a child’s education begins “the first day of his life.” Impressions are made on the infant mind going farther back than we can trace them. ”

“ Now this is how the furnace of the living body is kept smouldering on in its gentle and even way. Little blasts of air are constantly puffed in upon the burning fuel. That out-and-in play of your chest as you breathe,—that is the puffing of air blasts into certain chambers of your living laboratory, to keep up its smouldering fires. The more quickly and deeply you breathe, the warmer your body becomes; and the more slowly and softly you breathe, the colder that body remains. ”

“ The longer one lingers, the more one dreads to hear the voice of the guard who calls out the time to close, and when the spell is fairly on one who loves art, he will pass from Louvre to Luxembourg, and back again from Luxembourg to Louvre, unheeding the great, gay, bustling world that is surging up and down between. At the smaller gallery, modern art and living artists are better represented than at the Louvre. ”

“ When the devotee has tortured and misused his body until he has benumbed and paralyzed it to a degree that it can not feel or perceive, then he is no longer haunted by the things of the world. They do not any longer flow into his mind through his senses, and he becomes divine, or like Brahm, who has no distinctions whatever, and hence no knowledge of anything, nor consciousness of himself. For consciousness is a distinction of the me into subject and object, the knowing and the known—I and me.
The Hindu will not regard evil as divine, or as a part of the highest principle. ”

“ From early boyhood I have been a student of the life, character, and works of Daniel Webster. I never saw the great man’s face; I never heard his voice; he never knew even of my being in the world. My interest in Webster is entirely removed from the influence of considerations merely personal of whatever sort; but I have learned to reverence, nay, to love the man. ”

“ Wildly, and blindly, and very far, have the nations often drifted from the right course—there seemed to be no star in heaven, and no lamp on earth; but through every change an unseen omnipotent hand was guiding all things for the best: soul after soul was drawn by love’s mighty attraction to the cross; light arose out of darkness; a new life breathed over the world ”

“ Persian education, in the family and school, trained the youth to ride on horseback, to shoot with the bow and arrow, and, above all things, to speak the truth. This duty to speak the truth is to the Persian before all other duties, because truth is akin to clearness and light, and hence also to the good and pure—to Ahura-Mazda. Falsehood is the setting up of what is not, and hence inconsistent with reality. Hence the veil of falsehood prevents one from seeing reality, and hence it is akin to darkness. ”

“ And we can never let them leave Paris without a sight of the wonders that everybody sees. From Passy they make daily their entree into the city by the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and pass under the great Arc de Triomphe, that stands, the largest triumphal arch in the world, in the center of the beautiful Place de l’Etoile, from which branch like the points to a star the new beautiful avenues cut by Napoleon III in every direction, straight through miles of the most populous portions of the city. ”

“ And to us, as to most strangers, Paris and France are one. We shall see none of its other cities unless, moving southward, we stop at Lyons, and linger a day at Marseilles. Provincial life will come to us only in the city’s borrowed attire, as we find it in Paris, imported, and making itself at home. Nature and natural scenery can do little to captivate unless, indeed, we enter Italy by the pass of Mont Cenis, when we shall see what it is, even to a frivolous people like the French, to “lift their eyes unto the hills.” ”

“ Injustice would make all human action uncertain and obscure, and the darkness of Ahriman would prevail.
Truth-speaking is the worship of reality. If all things and all events are only a dream, it is of no consequence to pay so much respect to them as to be scrupulous of veracity in regard to them. Hence the Hindu makes monstrous fables about things and events, and lets them become the sport of his imagination. Thus we see how deep-reaching the religious principle is, and how widely different the Persian system of education is from the Hindu. ”

“ The majestic sweep of the first chapter of Genesis is so great, packing away in a small compass the entire account of the creation of the world and all things therein, that on its face it bears the stamp of God rather than man. Think, if you can, of any human philosopher dashing off with a few bold strokes of his pen such an account of creation. ”

“ Arizona is a land of constant surprises. In its natural phenomena it is the paradise of the scientist, antiquarian, and tourist. Its deep cañons are the open book of geology; its vast prehistoric ruins alike stimulate and baffle the antiquarian, and its marvelous scenery, its flora, remnants of a strange people, and ancient architecture, will attract thousands of tourists.
The first portion of the United States to be settled by Europeans, it is the last developed of all our territories save Alaska.
Possessing the oldest civilization, it is just coming into contact with the new. ”

“ In the mornings the churches are thinly peopled with worshippers, principally women; in the afternoon the city is alive with pleasure seekers of every class. Yet let no one imagine Paris given to pleasure to be what New York or Chicago under the same conditions might be—noisy, uproarious, or rude. Everybody on the brilliant, crowded boulevards, in the Bois, all down the whole length of the Champs Elysees, is decorous, moderate, well dressed and well behaved. ”

“ People go out, meaning to buy nothing, and buy everything, until the playful remark of an American author that “Paris is a great sweating furnace, in which human beings would turn life everlasting into gold, provided it were of negotiable value,” seems not so far from true. Thankful indeed might be the traveler, Chautauquan or other, who, unable to gratify temptation, escapes it, as only it can be escaped, by filling the time so full that there are left no hours for the loitering amid lovely and alluring things. ”

“ Man, starting from the side of his human spiritual need reaching out and upward toward God, is met by the revelation in Christ coming out and downward from God, a revelation which exactly fits and covers his need. This perfect match between the human need and the heavenly supply is the perfect proof of the Divine origin of the Bible. Just as color is intuitive to sight, harmony to the musical sense, beauty to the sense of the beautiful, so is God’s word intuitive to the spiritual consciousness. ”

“ But before Switzerland had a name, when Arragon was scarcely more than a name, Novgorod, by the frozen lakes, far in the wilds of an unknown country, unexplored, untrodden by any civilized people—Novgorod, hidden in its northern nights, was cherishing a freedom such as the republic of the Netherlands cherished in the sixteenth, and the republic of America cherishes in the nineteenth century. To the Slavs of Ilmen belongs the proud distinction of guarding intact through more than six hundred years the instinct for freedom inalienable to the Slavic race. ”

“ They have a genius among them in this very sensational Gussow. He is a young man not more than thirty, who was called to Berlin from Düsseldorf to take the ladies’ class in the Berlin Academy. He teaches these enthusiastic pupils as if they were strong, rough men, preparing themselves to encounter criticism; to banish everything that reminds them of an artificial world; that they may help him to restore nature to her simplicity, and in so doing absolve themselves from all laws by which perverted ideas seek security against themselves. ”

“ But it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not always successful in this world. The forces which Gonerill and Regan had sent out under the command of the bad Earl of Gloucester were victorious, and Cordelia, by the practices of this wicked earl, who did not like that any should stand between him and the throne, ended her life in prison. Thus heaven took this innocent lady to itself in her young years, after showing to the world an illustrious example of filial duty. Lear did not long survive this kind child. ”

“ We can only judge of motion, or force, or energy by witnessing its effects; and when we say that gunpowder or coal contain in them a store of potential energy, we only know that they do contain the capacity for producing movement and doing work. The gunpowder will, if inflamed, expand suddenly by the production of gases resulting from chemical changes induced by heat, and in such explosion will give liberty to enormous force. ”

“ The English fog keeps its own side of the channel, and we look up into the blue sky, radiant with sunshine, with a sense of having found an old long-absent friend. Long before we arrive in Paris, even the staunchest Briton of us all marvels why she wanted to stay in London, when here, just over the water, lay this smiling and beautiful France. ”

“ If by the word genius we mean transcendent genius, such as is found in our Shaksperes and Miltons, his definition can not be considered as otherwise than defective. But we do not always confine the word to this strict meaning. In a looser sense there are various types of genius. One star differeth from another in glory. If only a few occupy the higher places, and reach, so to speak, the topmost round of the ladder, a vastly greater number—a multitude which no man can number—may occupy lower places, and cluster on the lower rounds, sighing in vain to reach the highest. ”

“ We likewise are religious beings, and if we do not find truth, and love, and happiness, and regeneration, and eternal life, and resurrection, we shall die and perish. God’s word is brought to us; it contains truths, or at least statements and promises that stand over against these spiritual hungerings and thirstings just as food and drink stand over against the hunger and thirst of the body. ”