Enright

“ A gent can't own no music after he cuts it loose that a-way. The minute it leaves the bosoms of his fiddles, that's where he lets go. After that it belongs to any gent to dance by, cry by, set by, or fight by, as he deems meet an' pleasant at the time.'
"'What do you-alls say?' says Hamilton to Enright an' Peets. 'Does this yere piece of oppression on a leadin' citizen, perpetrated by a rank outsider, go? ”

“ Bar none, Doc Peets is the bitterest gent, verbal, that ever makes a moccasin track in the South-west. An' while Huggins ain't pleased none, them strictures has to go. To take to pawin' 'round for turmoil with Peets would be encroachin' onto the ediotic. Even if he emerges alive from sech controversies—an' it's four to one he wouldn't; for Peets, who's allers framed up with a brace of derringers, is about as vivid an enterprise as Wolfville affords— the Stranglers would convene with Old Man Enright in the cha'r, an' Huggins wouldn't last as long as a drink of whiskey. ”

“ The fact is, he's been havin' a mighty sight too gay a time of late, an' so I thinks it's a good, safe play, bein' as it's a hot day an' we has the time, to sorter call the committee together an' ask its views, whether we better hang this yere Cheyenne yet or not?”
“Mr. Pres'dent,” responds Dave Tutt, “if I'm in order, an' to get the feelin' of the meetin' to flowin' smooth, I moves we takes this Cheyenne an' proceeds with his immolation. I ain't basin' it on nothin' in partic'lar, but lettin' her slide as fulfillin' a long-felt want.”
“Do I note any remarks?” asks Enright. ”

“ We-all is a heap like you Kaintucks, down our way. We was a roode, exyooberant outfit; but manly an' sincere. It's trooly a region where men is men, as that sport common to our neck of timber known as "the first eye out for a quart of whiskey" testifies to ample. Thar's my old dad! I can see him yet,' an' yere Enright closes his eyes some ecstatic. 'He was a shore man. He stood a hundred-foot without a knot or limb; could wrastle or run or jump, an' was good to cut a 4-bit piece at one hundred yards, offhand, with his old 8-squar' rifle. He never shoots squirrels, my father don't ”

“ Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. ”

“ A good man has said: ‘It is not by change of circumstances, but by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty.’ And another says that trouble ‘brings for us, if we will accept it, the boon of fortitude, patience, self-control, wisdom, sympathy, faith.’ Those are big things to gain, Ellen,—big things. ”

“ All the truly great seers and moral teachers of the race have here the same word for us, and it is this: Do the thing thou seest to be good; realize thy ideal. In the words of Sabatier, “The essential thing in the world is not to serve this ideal or that, but with all one’s soul to serve the ideal which one has chosen.” Such loyalty to one’s ideal is moral goodness.21 This imperative of conscience that one be true and loyal to the best one knows is the only thing absolute and categorical in the utterance of the moral faculty. ”

“ A morality and a religion of "love," the curbing of the self-affirming spirit, and a doctrine encouraging patience, resignation, helpfulness, and co-operation in word and deed may be of the highest value within the confines of such classes, even in the eyes of their rulers: for it restrains the feelings of rivalry, of resentment, and of envy,—feelings which are only too natural in the bungled and the botched,—and it even deifies them under the ideal of humility, of obedience, of slave-life, of being-ruled, of poverty, of illness, and of lowliness. ”

“ It was hot in the morning when they woke up, and it kept on growing hotter all day long: still, burning, intense. The windless evenings, sparked with the drifting lights of fireflies and the fixed lights of stars, were so warm that the children were allowed to stay up later than usual. They made firefly lanterns and carried them off in the shadows, glimmering like will-o'-the-wisps, while the grownups sat in the lawn chairs talking and tinkling the ice in their cool glasses.
Each day it was hotter. Julian and Portia felt proud of it. ”

“ The hope of filling an honorable place in their imagination, ought not to be the sole incentive to the practice of virtue, it should be the desire to have a good opinion of ourselves, and to be able to say, whatever may be the opinion of the public: I have nothing with which to reproach myself. But, what matters it to what we owe our virtue, provided we have it? ”

“ Whatever state this world could have reached must ere now have been attained, and not only once but an incalculable number of times. 249
My doctrine is: Live so that thou mayest desire to live again,—that is thy duty,—for in any case thou wilt live again! He unto whom striving is the greatest happiness, let him strive; he unto whom peace is the greatest happiness, let him rest; he unto whom subordination, following, obedience, is the greatest happiness, let him obey. ”

“ You, Ernest, must remember the subjects who laid out their land in flowery gardens; like those who seek the pleasures of life, rather than the duties. And you, my thoughtless Jack, and little Francis, think of the fate of those who left their land untilled, or heedlessly sowed tares for wheat. These are God’s people who neither study nor reflect; who cast to the winds all instruction, and leave room in their minds for evil. ”

“ It is true, that both rectitude and duty, together with liberty, are resolvable into the essential good. Or, in other words, freedom, rectitude, and duty are the modes of thought in which we conceive of the good as existing in the soul of man, and that they are, each of them, in their distinct nature and harmonious union, the true ideal of the good—the modes of thought, also, in which the intuition of man perceives the good in the case of every moral action which is good. ”

“ This also is the essence of justice,—to attend every one his own; nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except through direct contemplation of the divine essence. Courage, then, for “the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver, and more industrious, than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to search for it.” ”

“ At the close of life’s evening I shall appear before Thee with empty hands, for I ask not, Lord, that Thou wouldst count my works.... All our justice is tarnished in Thy sight. It is therefore my desire to be clothed with Thine own Justice and to receive from Thy Love the eternal possession of Thyself. ”

“ But I searched deeply into the various branches of moral philosophy, whose dignity I hold in reverence, because it is self-evident to those who study it, and disposes our minds to virtuous living;—and especially into history, which, preserving in a pleasing record the manners of times gone by, by example excites its readers to follow that which is good and shun that which is evil. ”

“ I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected—ready to say, “I do not know,” if so it be, to meet all men on an absolute equality—to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unafraid and unabashed. ”

“ With these people to do what they conceived to be right was part of their life, and to do either less or more was to them incomprehensible. Their life was their religion, their work was their prayer, and their enjoyment was their praise. ”

“ And now I say unto you, my sons, love righteousness and walk therein;
For the paths of righteousness are worthy of acceptation,
But the paths of unrighteousness shall suddenly be destroyed and vanish. ”

“ He had come into the world for righteousness and for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud outcries, but, "The poor always ye have with you, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good." ”

“ Thus the lesson of the parable concentrates itself at last upon a point; but that point is the turning-point of life or death to men. Is any one disposed to complain that it stakes all upon an opinion? It does, and why not? One man’s opinion is that his own righteousness, especially when he has gotten time to improve it, may be safely presented in the judgment, and ought to satisfy the judge. ”

“ We then admit that something else—call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behaviour’, or ‘the good of society’—has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by ‘being good’ is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call ‘wrong’: well, we must give them up. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call ‘right’: well, we shall have to do them. ”

“ To make this illustration, we must first cultivate religion or science or scholarship in ourselves.
This is the statement of the call to service which I have been approaching slowly and with care, for to the generous-hearted it is on first acquaintance a hard saying. Seek truth or seek goodness for yourselves, if you wish others to have it. If you rise to your own stature, you will thereby perform all the service you could desire—you will help others to rise. Doubtless some of your neighbors will think you selfish. ”

“ But the sense of duty, the feeling of moral and religious obligation, is universally discriminative of the human family; the sentiment of right and wrong is engraven indelibly on all human hearts. And, amidst all the ignorance or misconceptions that may prevail as to the merit or demerit of particular actions, the moral principle points but to one foundation of truth—the One Supreme—the Lord of conscience as of creation. ”

“ In so far he was an individual, and claimed his right as such. As an individual, with a mind and conscience of his own, he had a right, not only to have opinions upon every subject of human interest, but to express them. ”

“ The thing I honor in you is your desire to be right—and I know that you will act toward me as your sense of right prompts you. You will act toward me as you feel you must do, to be true. Yes, be true to yourself, please ”

“ The uprightness that is. If it appear that the sick person is truly pious, the interpreter will not do as Job's friends had done, make it his business to prove him a hypocrite because he is afflicted, but on the contrary will show him his uprightness, notwithstanding his afflictions, that he may take the comfort of it, and be easy, whatever the event is. 2. The uprightness, the reformation, that should be, in order to life and peace. When men are made to see the way of uprightness to be the only way, and a sure way to salvation, and to choose it, and walk in it accordingly, the work is done. ”

“ The fact is that the most conscious conceit of people who believe themselves to be chosen, here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the "good and the just" place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side "of Truth"—and the rest of mankind, "the world" on the other.... ”

“ Envy was forever refusing to let Good-will, Appreciation, Approval, Delight, come in. Detraction would give no countenance to Virtue and Excellence. Doubt made deadly assault upon Faith, and Trust, and Hope, whenever they drew near, while Ill-will stood ever on the alert to drive off Charity, Loving-kindness and Neighborly regard. ”

“ Endor himself, an accomplished man of the world, felt before this meal was half through that the men about him had a depth of thought, a play of ideas, a range, an authority beyond any he had met with. ”

“ I could not be checked by any fear of overstepping the modesty of Truth in the celebration of Virtue, so solid and so extensive, that the malevolence of Envy could not diminish its weight, the fondness of Enthusiasm could not amplify its effects. ”

“ But why come out? the street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie. When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal? ”

“ But man feels, too, how far he always is from fulfilling or even from fully perceiving this true law of his being, these indications of the Eternal, the way of righteousness. He says, and must say: I am a stranger upon earth, Oh, hide not thy commandments from me! Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Eternal, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified! ”

“ Indeed there is a certain minimum of all the four — Courage, Prudence, Temperance, Justice — without which or below which neither society could hold together, nor the life of the individual agent himself could be continued. ”

“ I might indeed support the argument, that our opinion with regard to the first principles of morals has 87nought to do with our practice;—that whether I stand my virtue upon prudence, or propriety, or justice, or benevolence, or self-love, that my virtue is still one and the same;—that the dispute is not about the end, but the origin; that of all the thousands who have yielded homage to virtue, hardly one has thought of inspecting the pedestal she stands upon ”