Elbert Hubbard

“ Genius seems so sporadic a stuff that when we find an outcrop along the line of a whole family we are wont to mark it on memory's chart in red. We talk of the Herschels, of Renan and his sister, of the Beechers, and the Fields, in a sort of awe, mindful that Nature is parsimonious in giving out transcendent talent, and may never do the like again. So who can forget the Rossettis—two brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and two sisters, Maria and Christina—each of whom stands forth as far above the ordinary, yet all strangely dependent upon one another? ”

“ Josephine knew Paris and Parisian society thoroughly. Fifteen years of close contact in success and defeat with statesmen, soldiers, diplomats, artists and literati had taught her much. It is probable that she was the most gifted woman in Paris. Now, Napoleon learned by induction as Josephine had, and as all women do, and as genius must, for life is short—only dullards spend eight years at Oxford. He absorbed Josephine as the devilfish does its prey. And to get every thought and feeling that a good woman possesses you must win her completest love. ”

“ We grope our way through life. Nature's first thought is for reproduction of the species; she has so overloaded physical passion that men and women marry when the blood is warm and intellect callow. Girls marry for life the first man that offers, and forever put behind them the possibilities of a love that would enable them to lift up their eyes to the hills from whence cometh their help. Very, very seldom do the years that bring a calmer pulse reveal a mating of mind and spirit. ”

“ Sympathy is the first attribute of love as well as its last. And I am not sure but that sympathy is love's own self, vitalized mayhap by some divine actinic ray. Only a thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ could win the adoration of the world. Only the souls who have suffered are well loved. Thus does Golgotha find its recompense. Hark ye and take courage, ye who are in bonds! Gracious spirits, seen or unseen, will minister to you now, where otherwise they would have passed without a sign! But from the day Fenelon met Madame Guyon his fortune began to decline. ”

“ But, egad! brother, it's no small delight to be sixty and a little stooped and a trifle rheumatic, and have your own blessed daughter, sweet and stately, comb your thinning gray locks, help you on with your overcoat, find your cane, and go trooping with you, hand in hand, down the lane on merciful errand bent. It's a temptation to grow old and feign sciatica; and if you could only know that, some day, like old King Lear, upon your withered cheek would fall Cordelia's tears, the thought would be a solace.
So Jane Austen began to write stories about the simple folks she knew. ”

“ Name if you can another woman who touched life at so many points! Home, health, wealth, strength, honors, affection, applause, motherhood, loss, danger, death, defeat, sacrifice, humiliation, illness, banishment, imprisonment, escape. Again comes hope—returning strength, wealth, recognition, fame tempered by opposition, home, a few friends, and kindly death—cool, all-enfolding death.
If Harriet Martineau showed poor judgment in choosing her parents, we can lay no such charge to the account of Madame De Stael. ”

“ John Kenyon said, "I told you so," but Edward Barrett scowled. He accused her foolishly; he attempted to dictate to her—she must use this ink or that. Why? Because he said so. He quarreled with her to ease the love-hurt that was smarting in his heart.
Poor, little, pale-faced poet! Earthly success has nothing left for thee! Thy thoughts, too great for speech, fall on dull ears. Even thy father, for whom thou first took up pen, doth not understand thee! and a mother's love thou hast never known. And fame without love—how barren! Heaven is thy home. ”

“ The management of the household then devolved on Christina. Her burdens must have been heavy in those days, or did she make them light by cheerful doing? She gave up society, refused the thought of marriage, and joined that unorganized sisterhood of mercy—the women who toil that others may live. But she sang at her work, as the womanly woman ever does. For although a woman may hold no babe in her arms, the lullaby leaps to her tongue, and at eventide she sings songs to the children of her brain—sweet idealization of the principle of mother-love. ”

“ Love is a pain at times. To ease the hurt the lover would hurt the beloved. He badgers her, pinches her, provokes her. One step more and he may kill her.
Edward Barrett's daughter, she of the raven curls and gentle ways, was reaching a point where her father's love was not her life. A good way to drive love away is to be jealous. He had seen it coming years before; he brooded over it; the calamity was upon him. Her fame was growing: some one called her the Shakespeare of women. ”

“ As one moves out of Keighley the country becomes stony; the trees are left behind, and there rises on all sides billow on billow of purple heather. The way is rough as the Pilgrim's Progress road to Paradise. These hillside moors are filled with springs that high up form rills, then brooks, then cascades or "becks," and along the Haworth road, wherever one of these hurrying, scurrying, dancing becks crosses the highway, there is a factory devoted to keeping alive the name of Cardigan. Next to the factory is a "pub.," and publics and factories checker themselves all along the route. ”

“ Germaine Necker had no conception of what love is.
Many women never have. Had this fine young woman met a man with intellect as clear, mind as vivid, and heart as warm as her own, and had he pierced her through with a wit as strong and keen as she herself wielded, her pride would have been broken and she might have paused. ”

“ The sun came out and came out and came out; birds chirruped in the hedgerows and the daws in the high poplars called and scolded. The mist still lingered on the distant hills, and we could hear the tinkle of sheep-bells and the barking of a dog coming out of the nothingness.
White Pigeon wore flat-soled shoes and measured off the paces with an easy swing. We walked in silence, filled with the rich quiet of country sounds and country sights. What a relief to get away from noisy, bustling, busy Paris! God made the country! ”

“ She has been called a philosopher and a literary light. But she was only socio-literary. Her written philosophy does not represent the things she felt were true—simply those things she thought it would be nice to say. She cultivated literature, only that she might shine. Love, wealth, health, husband, children—all were sacrificed that she might lead society and win applause. No one ever feared solitude more: she must have those about her who would minister to her vanity and upon whom she could shower her wit. ”

“ Godwin, bachelor, aged forty, found himself very much in love with Mary Wollstonecraft and her baby. Her absolute purity of purpose, her frankness, honesty and high ideals surpassed anything he had ever dreamed of finding incarnated in woman. He became her sincere lover; and she, the discarded, the forsaken, reciprocated; for it seems that the tendrils of affection, ruthlessly uprooted, cling to the first object that presents itself. ”

“ But intellectual power, like physical strength, endures but for a day. Giants who have a giant's strength and use it like a giant must be put down. If you have intellectual power, hide it!
Do thy daily work in thine own little way and be content. The personal touch repels as well as attracts. Thy presence is a menace—thy existence an affront—beware! They are weaving a net for thy feet, and hear you not the echo of hammering, as of men building a scaffold?
Go read history! Thinkest thou that all men are mortal save thee alone, and that what has befallen others can not happen to thee? ”

“ It is over a hundred years since Jane Austen lived. But when you tramp that five miles from Overton, where the railroad-station is, to Steventon, where she was born, it doesn't seem like it. Rural England does not change much. Great fleecy clouds roll lazily across the blue, overhead, and the hedgerows are full of twittering birds that you hear but seldom see; and the pastures contain mild-faced cows that look at you with wide-open eyes over the stone walls; and in the towering elm-trees that sway their branches in the breeze crows hold a noisy caucus. ”

“ You can not write the history of English Letters and leave the Lambs out. They were the loved and loving friends of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, Jeffrey and Godwin. They won the recognition of all who prize the far-reaching intellect—the subtle imagination. The pathos and tenderness of their lives entwine us with tendrils that hold our hearts in thrall.
They adopted a little girl, a beautiful little girl by the name of Emma Isola. And never was there child that was a greater joy to parents than was Emma Isola to Charles and Mary. ”

“ The tall slender girl who was so very quiet was the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
"Ye gods, what a pedigree!" said Shelley.
The young man called again, and after explaining his situation was advised to go back home and make peace with his wife and father at any cost of personal intellectual qualms. Philosophy was all right; but life was one thing and philosophy another. Live with Harriet as he had vowed to do—love was a good deal glamour, anyway; write poetry, of course, if he felt like it, but keep it to himself. The world was not to be moved by enthusiastic youth. ”

“ On no subject do mortals so deceive themselves as their motives for marriage. Their acts may be all right, but the reasons they give for doing them never are. Napoleon desired a new wife, because he wished a son to found a dynasty.
"You have Eugene!" said Josephine.
"He's my son by proxy," said Napoleon, with a weary smile.
All motives, like ores, are found mixed, and counting the whole at one hundred, Napoleon's desire for a son after the flesh should stand as ten—other reasons ninety. All men wish to be thought young. Napoleon was forty, and his wife was forty-seven. ”

“ The dog that craves naught else but the presence of his master, who is faithful to the one and whines out his life on that master's grave, waiting for the caress that never comes and the cheery voice that is never heard—that's the way a woman loves! A woman may admire, respect, revere and obey, but she does not love until a passion seizes upon her that has in it the abandon of Niagara. ”

“ The opposites of things are alike, and that is why the world ties Jane Eyre and Jane Austen in one bundle. Their methods of work were totally different: their effects gotten in different ways. Charlotte Bronte fascinates by startling situations and highly colored lights that dance and glow, leading you on in a mad chase. There's pain, unrest, tragedy in the air. The pulse always is rapid and the temperature high.
It is not so with Jane Austen. She is an artist in her gentleness, and the world is today recognizing this more and more. ”

“ Kenyon was not so very young—that is, he was not absurdly young: he was fifty. But men who really love books always have young hearts. Kenyon's father left him a fortune, no troubles had ever come his way, and his was not the temperament that searches them out. He dressed young, looked young, acted young, felt young.
No doubt John Kenyon sincerely admired Elizabeth Barrett, and prized her work. And while she read his mind a deal more understandingly than he did her poems, she was grateful for his kindly attention and well-meant praise. ”

“ On recognizing an acquaintance, Germaine Necker's face would be illumined, and her smile would light a room. She could pronounce a man's name so he would be ready to throw himself at her feet, or over a precipice for her. And she could listen in a way that complimented; and by a sigh, a nod, an exclamation, bring out the best—such thoughts as a man never knew he had. She made people surprise themselves with their own genius; thus proving that to make a good impression means to make the man pleased with himself. "Any man can be brilliant with her," said a nettled competitor ”

“ But the proud, the vain, the ambitious, the ennui-ridden, the people-who-wish-to-be, and who are ever looking for the strong man to give them help—these thronged her parlors.
And when you have named these you have named all those who are foremost in commerce, politics, art, education, philanthropy and religion. The world is run by second-rate people. The best are speedily crucified, or else never heard of until long after they are dead.
Madame De Stael, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, was queen of the people who ran the world—-at least the French part of it. ”

“ Yet persecution has its compensation, and the treatment that Madame Guyon received emphasized the truths she taught and sent them ringing through the schools and salons and wherever thinking people gathered themselves together. Yes, persecution has its compensation. In its state of persecution a religion is pure, if ever; its decline begins when its prosperity commences. Prosperous men are never wise and seldom good. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!
Surely, persecution has its compensation! When Madame Guyon was sick and in prison, was she not visited by Fenelon? ”

“ Fenelon, favored by the gods with beauty and far-reaching intellect! Fenelon, who knew the gold of silence. Fenelon, on whose lips dwelt grace, and who by the magic of his words had but to speak to be believed and to be beloved.
When Louis the Little made that most audacious blunder which cost France millions in treasure and untold loss in men and women, Fenelon wrote to the Prime Minister: "These Huguenots have many virtues that must be acknowledged and conserved. We must hold them by mildness. We can not produce conformity by force. ”