Vida

“ She looked up and saw the most beautiful girl in the world. Thin and pale and with enormous slanting blue eyes and golden curls as neat and smooth as new wood shavings, she held wrapped around her a pale blue flannel dressing gown tied at the neck with a big blue satin bow. On her feet were white marabou slippers. A girl one dreamed a movie star would be like if one could see her close by. Vida, transfixed, watched Lucy snuggling into the chairs. ”

“ In the kitchen Vida imagined herself in Lucy's place making an heroic passionate speech of denial, spellbinding the hearers before sweeping grandly out.
"There must be someone who can help. Figente?" was the best she could think of to help Lucy from the slough of despondency.
"Oh, you know Figente, he likes her. He'd think it a big joke on me. It is. She knows now no one would believe me if I said she was a Madam in Denver or anything I might say, because I am now known as a 'call girl'—every girl there was. She's sure a smart one." ”

“ This grudging token Vida wore in simple probity as a symbol of undying friendship. She had planned giving Lucy an enamel bluebird pin for luck but at the last moment saw a woman making gold-wire pins in Lapworth's and ordered one, Lucy's name to be entwined with hers.
"Know what," Lucy said to Mae, "I think we ought to have given each other a pair of those new light-tan silk stockings. They're beautiful the way they make the legs look bare. Maybe we can dye my graduation stockings and my old white silk so we look up to date in New York City." ”

“ Espinel, however, survives as the author of a clever picaresque novel entitled Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618) . It is, in many passages, an autobiography of Espinel with picturesque embellishments. Marcos is not a chivalresque “esquire,” but an adventurer who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to great men; and the object of the author is to warn young men against such a life. ”

“ So that was why Lucy had not been home evenings recently, returning so late. As always, she spoke of herself as the pursuer. "I wondered what you've been up to," Vida said dryly.
"Yes, the only trouble is I'm spending too much time with him, so I think I'll have to let him go or I might get too fond of him. I've only been really in love once in my life. With a man I'd have given up anything for. I made a mistake in thinking that if you're really in love the one you love feels that way too. Maybe a man and woman never feel the same about each other. ”

“ The land of this island is very low, and covered with great and beautiful groves of trees. There is much game, and abundance of meat and rice, and there is no memory of any scarcity. Nowadays it is called the island of Boa-Vida ”

“ This reputation induced him to seek the papal court in Rome, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters of polite learning, the place where students might expect advancement through their literary talents. Vida reached Rome in the last years of the pontificate of Julius II. Leo X, on succeeding to the papal chair (1513) , treated him with marked favour, bestowed on him the priory of St Sylvester at Frascati, and bade him compose a heroic Latin poem on the life of Christ. ”

“ What is life to you and me? It is the utmost extent of our desires. Do you wish to increase, to continue? Do you wish to possess kingdoms and, thrones, principalities and powers; to exist, and continue to exist; to grow in understanding, in wisdom, in knowledge, in power, and in glory throughout an endless duration? Why, yes, is the reply natural to every heart that has been warmed with the life-giving influences of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ So, in some future age, the time will come, when each one of us shall have more mind, and heart, and soul, than Christ on earth; more than all men now on earth have ever had; yes, more than they and all the souls of men now passed to Heaven;—shall have, each one of us, more being than they all have had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more rest and bliss of life. ”

“ Do we begin again in our new existence to learn much by experience, or have we full powers? My soul, whither wilt thou emigrate? Where wilt thou lodge the first night after leaving this body? Will an angel soothe thy fluttering, for sadly flurried wilt thou be in entering upon eternity? ”

“ And by choosing life, you will express the true desire and thought, and I say, "To love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days." To dwell upon the land, but as a stranger in their eyes, you will be considered a resident and the essence will be seen in your completion of what leads to perfection. ”

“ In silent enjoyment, in subdued suffering, in sweet communion, we see how Thou art the very Life of our lives, the very Soul of our souls, the very stamina, the very substance, the very vitality of our existence. Thou art the whole plan, the complete purpose, the entire progress, of all our lives. Thou hast designed, Thou hast determined, Thou hast prescribed, the destiny of our lives. ”

“ Blessed be God, I was enabled to speak with life, power, and passionate desire of the edification of God’s people. *In the evening, I felt something spiritual and watchful, lest my heart should by any means be drawn away from God. Oh, when shall I come to that blessed world, where every power of my soul will be incessantly and eternally wound up, in heavenly employments and enjoyments, to the highest degree! ”

“ This strife between the felt restriction of the Christian life and the natural craving for abundant life, for entrance into all that the world can show us, and experience of all forms of enjoyment—this strife goes on unceasingly in the heart of many of us as it goes on from age to age in the world. Which is the true view of life, which is the view to guide us in choosing and refusing the enjoyments and pursuits that are presented to us? ”

“ His poems were published in 1582, and reprinted with additions in 1619; they are reissued in the Biblioteca de autores españoles, vol. xxxii. Of Herrera’s prose works only the Vida y muerta de Tomas Moro (1592) survives; it is a translation of the life in Thomas Stapleton’s Tres Thomae (1588) .
Bibliography.—E. Bourciez, “Les Sonnets de Fernando de Herrera,” Annales de la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux (1891) ; Fernando de Herrera, controversia sobre sus anotaciones á les obras de Garcilaso de la Vega (Seville, 1870) ; A. Morel-Fatio, L’Hymne sur Lépante (Paris, 1893) . ”

“ We said that this life, if fully lived, exhibited the four characters of work and contemplation, self-discipline and service: deepening and incarnating within its own various this-world experience its other-world apprehensions of Eternity, of God. ”

“ Vigor of body, of mind, passions, desires, reason, all that goes to make up a human soul, were in the full tide of existence; and I was here surely not to contemplate death, but to fulfil the functions of life—of a new life. ”

“ Thy Life, as alone the finite mind can conceive it, is self-forming, self-manifesting Will:—this Life, clothed to the eye of the mortal with manifold sensuous forms, flows forth through me, and throughout the immeasurable universe of Nature. ”

“ We came originally, as much as you yourself, or the flowers, and the trees, and the sunbeams, from one Divine Hand. It is only that we have been trained and moulded by human hands to be what we are. And just so are you; God creates you, but life moulds you. ”

“ The life is under the vine that is above me. The praise of life is before me. Who will come and tell me? I will, for I am great. If the life that is under the vine that is above me, the praise of life is before me ... ”

“ All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love. ”

“ And teach us, O God, to use this world without abusing it: and to receive the things needful for the body, without losing our part in thy love, which is better than life itself. Whatever we have of this world, O may we have the same with thy leave and love; sanctified to us by the word of God and by prayer; and by the right improvement thereof to thy glory. ”

“ Which, then, shall be our choice, — the sinful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving, and eternal?
The spiritual sense of Life and its grand pursuits is of itself a bliss, health-giving and joy-inspiring. This sense of Life illumes our pathway with the radiance of divine Love ”

“ I believe and confess also an eternal life which thou, my Lord and God, wilt give to thy faithful and elect after this suffering life; that thou wilt endow them with sure, clear and joyous beholding of thy divine countenance, and satisfy them in all their desires with eternal rest, eternal peace and eternal salvation, which joy, delight and bliss no man can express or conceive here on earth. ”

“ The first cry of life, when he came out of the womb, as much testified of One in whom is life, who is the Source of life, as the look with which he greeted his sisters or his Lord, when he was commanded to come out of the grave. The opening of every sense to take in the sights and sounds of the world around him,—the opening of every affection which apprehended his human relations,—testified of the same living Word. ”

“ The right apprehension of these and the active response to them constitute the true exercise of our own nature; and it is through that exercise that we know Life,—the one Life,—and know it to be divine. ”

“ Into his spiritual sight will come the Principles of the divine Life, and as he approaches them, their incomparable beauty and majestic symmetry will astonish his vision, and gladden his heart with a gladness hitherto unknown. ”

“ This is my charge, this number of immortal souls; and each one of all these souls has to be numbered among the Angels or the devils! How can I abide at home, or rest, or take my pleasure, with such a burden and such a charge laid on me! Is not each separate soul worth a life's work, all the labour I could give. ”

“ Where was the all-wise and beneficent God who looked after the miserable and forlorn? Life was life, and that was everything. Beauty in life—that was eternal, the meaning of nature, and every man must love it, share it, and mark the image of himself upon the future. ”

“ In the power of this risen self we stand with our faces upturned, with our whole life opened to God, and human effort, human growth, human hope, love, joy,--all are joined in the sense of Divine resurrection. ”

“ And what is the meaning of this mortal life—this strange phenomenon otherwise so unintelligible—if it be not the moment in which a soul is proved, the period in which a soul is shaped and developed for other lives to come? ”

“ Again, the true idea of Life results in the greatest blessing to mortals, for “when God, who is our Life, shall appear,” when this spiritual status of being is understood, “then shall we be like unto Him in glory.” ”

“ So shall our life pierce down with its seeking roots to the abiding ground of all Being, and, looking to the 'things that are eternal,' we shall be able to make what is but for a moment contribute to the everlasting ennobling of our character and enrichment of our life yonder. ”

“ Beneath our experience of life which changes there is this great Living Essence. "I am that I am," profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with whom is no beginning of experience or purpose, yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will. ”

“ How the vigorous life watches the passage of the liberated life out of its earthly environment! What a change is this! How important the knowledge of whither life tends! Here is shown the setting free of a disciplined spirit giving up its mortality for immortality,—the condition necessary to know God. ”

“ For that which we are here shown as a possible human achievement is not a life of comfortable piety, or the enjoyment of the delicious sensations of the armchair mystic. We are offered, it is true, a new dower of life; access to the full possibilities of human nature. ”

“ And now I will venture to make a statement for the consideration of every thinking mind in this house—a statement which, if it be true, is of infinite and eternal importance—and it is this: Love and truth support and keep life in man's spirit, just as bread and water support and keep life in man's body. ”

“ The new heart, and the right spirit,—the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very disposition and inclination of the soul,—excludes every jot and tittle of self-assertion, every particle of proud and stoical manhood. ”

“ Down below them, is another question which is included in them all and which sooner or later must be faced by each and every one of us: "Why am I here on earth? Has my life any purpose in the great, everlasting scheme of things? What is that purpose?" ”

“ Then there is the natural life of thinking, loving, willing, enjoying, sorrowing, and the like, and that continues as long as He who is the life and light of men breathes into them the breath of that life. ”

“ The good receive that Divine life, (for the Divine life, as before shown, is love and wisdom) into a mental organisation or form which is correspondent thereto; they receive that love or spiritual heat, and bring it forth again in the delicious fruits of good and benevolent actions; and they reflect that wisdom or spiritual light in the beautiful lights and colours of true, wise, and sparkling thoughts. ”