Bon vivant

“ May we be taught to know and feel, and rejoice in the knowledge and the feeling, that of Thee is our true freedom, from Thee is bur true happiness, unto Thee is our true progress! Thus may our lives ever tend and grow toward Thee, and in Thee alone may we find our home, station, place, position—the only success and reward of life! ”

“ Not that prosperity follows righteousness, not that poverty attends wickedness, in worldly measure, but that life is the gift of a right will is her message; how we, striving for eternal life, may best meet the chances and the bitter fates of mortal existence, is her brooding care; ideal characters, or those ideal in some trait or phase, in the midst of a hostile environment, are her fixed study. ”

“ But plain, simple living would be moral if, though wealthy, I think of all the want and misery in the world about me -and feel that I ought to live a plain, simple life and not one of ease and luxury. ”

“ Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for the moment; to make others as well as him happy in the long run; to add to his perfection or dignity; to harm no one; to follow from reason or flow from universal law; to be in accordance with the will of God; to promote the survival of the human species on this planet,—are so many tests, each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the essence of all good things or actions so far as they are good. ”

“ Moral perfection for himself, and, as the outcome to the world, not a new church or a theology or a missionary enterprise, but a winning of the forces of nature to the service of man, and a shaping of the social organism for the benefit of all. ”

“ And, while you are at this moment meditating, oh grasp the truth of the great law that you will find your own life only in losing it in the service of others,—that the more of your life you so give, the fuller and the richer, the greater and the grander, the more beautiful and the more happy your own life will become. ”

“ The survival of the fittest is one of them in its larger sense. It is that under which my people have survived."
"And that all men are by nature entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." ”

“ In the first place, consider that the great object of life to us is not enjoyment, but the formation of a right character; that such a character can not be formed except by discipline, and that the trials and difficulties of domestic life, if met in a proper spirit and manner, will in the end prove blessings rather than evils, by securing a measure of elevation, dignity, patience, self-control, and benevolence, that could be gained by no other methods. ”

“ I have always admired the way in which the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity Fair. ”

“ To say, therefore, that this religion has made mankind happy, is to disregard all the operations of the human heart, and the most justifiable hopes of the human mind.
Man! If thou wouldst be happy, thou must come home to Nature, admire her splendid beauties, develope truth from the permanence of her laws, cultivate real virtue, improve and exalt thy character, extend the sphere of thy utility, and invariably adhere to the practice of a pure and genuine morality. ”

“ This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one début; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened; but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitués of such a paradise and to be looked upon by them—what is a girl’s first dance and short-sleeved tulle compared with this? ”

“ But imagine my astonishment when his first question was, ‘Do you believe life is worth living?’ asked in an earnest but calm manner. I confess this question from lips so young alarmed me and went to my heart like a thrust. ‘Why, certainly,’ was my reply, ‘life is worth living, and living good. How do you come to ask a question that sounds so strange from the lips of a young man? ”

“ No one who has examined with care and thoughtfulness the aspects of Life and Nature but must allow that in the contemplation of such a spectacle, great and most moral truths must force themselves on the notice and sink deep into the heart. ”

“ But if by due care and thought of self, by reasonable enjoyment of the bright and pleasant things which life brings to most, I in some degree or wholly counterpoise such pains and sorrows as life brings to all, and at the same time help to brighten the lives of those around, and those also of generations as yet unborn, how shall I doubt what answer to give to the question. Is life worth living? Not sad is the answer, but bright and cheering.
There is still not a little to be said respecting the due care of personal well-being. ”

“ It is my business to teach mankind how to live, how to honor their present existence, how to treat their bodies so as to live to a good old age on the earth, and have power to do good and not evil all their days, and be ready to enter into the rest prepared for the Saints. ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ The standard of living has been defined as the “mode of activity and scale of comfort which a person has come to regard as indispensable to his happiness and to secure and retain which he is willing to make any reasonable sacrifice.” ”

“ Sure, now, of the existence of his race; accompanied in all his thoughts by those mysterious cohorts of the dead and the unborn which prolong the importance of the humblest life; our philosopher bids us lay no stress upon our own experience, and sacrifice, if needs be, the details of our happiness to the welfare of the whole. ”

“ And all that meets the necessities, and supplies the wants of man; all that removes the evils, incident to his fallen nature, in his organic condition, as a physical, intellectual and moral agent; and in his accidental conditions, as child, son or daughter, husband, wife or parent, subject, magistrate or state, to promote and secure his highest welfare in time, and his hopes in eternity, is truth. Man the subject, truth the means and the highest state of happiness, in all these several conditions, the end. ”

“ We are here to introduce correct doctrine, to introduce correct morals, to introduce correct philosophy, to introduce correct government and to teach men how to live and how to die—how to be happy in this world and in the world which is to come, and to lay the foundation for eternal lives in the eternal worlds. ”

“ They have passed through life as terrors to the living, and sunk among the dead while none lamented them. Others, whom nature had endowed with no uncommon qualifications, have so directed their powers to the attainment and advancement of good, and so virtuously fulfilled "the plain intent of life," as to be considered blessings in society, ornaments to their own age, and benefactors to posterity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “meaning” of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?... ”

“ There are three possible lives open to every man's choice: a bad life, in which selfishness or passion or both, either refined or coarse, rule; a good, true, natural life; and a Father-pleasing life. By a good, true, natural life I mean, just now, a really Christian life in all that that means, but lived as if there were no emergency in the world to change one's habit of life. ”

“ Is their conduct in stricter conformity with useful or exalted virtue? Do they sympathize more with the unfortunate, or exhibit greater specimens of genuine benevolence? Is the heart tranquillized, the mind improved, and their actions more consistent with the invariable principles of rectitude? Have they diminished human misery, or improved the condition of human nature? No! Where then is the utility of this thing called regeneration? If the heart be not improved, the mind cultivated, or morality extended in the sphere of its influence, no advantage has resulted from this pretended change. ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ The object is in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a social being.
The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called virtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only true object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence is the desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the manner in which good ought to be done. ”

“ And this is true, but how are we to get men to accept it? Teach men to believe in a future life and you strengthen every moral sentiment and every Godward aspiration by revealing the true dignity of human nature. ”

“ The foregoing impressive sentiments of this celebrated writer disclose with clearness to the view of the human mind, the nature of moral principle and the foundation of all right and of all virtue. It is the reciprocation of sensation, the mutuality of condition, of powers and wants, that constitute the immortal basis of justice, and lead to the establishment of rules, whose operation must ever be in strict coincidence with the happiness of the human species. ”

“ Is there a profession, or trade, or court, or country which has not been sanctified by moral heroes who drew in their holy inspirations from its lessons? And who can tell us the amount of goodness in every-day life, to some extent necessarily hidden, but of which we catch such unearthly glimpses, and which is the practical fruit of its principles? {299} The virtuous families, the upright transactions, the glorious sacrifices, the noble charities, the restraint of passion, the interior purity, the patient perseverance! ”

“ In the light of this wisdom would come the discovery, that the virtue of right living, bears the seeds of a perpetuity, which begets true and lasting happiness! An overwhelming answer in the affirmative, from every point of view, to the question, does it pay to be unselfish? ”

“ Crowning these and transcending them in importance are the supreme sentiments and ideals of life, which cannot properly be regarded as habits; they are sympathy, love, faith, reverence for religious convictions, and the ideal of freedom or liberty.
Society itself could not endure but for the stability which habits afford. ”

“ Thus we meet with a fundamental philosophy of life in which it is not the satisfaction of needs, appetites, and desires, but the opposite theory which is thought to lead to welfare. Renounce what you want; do what you do not want to do; pursue what is repugnant ”

“ From his early youth he had always entertained a deep sense of religion, a consummate love of virtue, an ardent thirst after knowledge, and an earnest desire to promote the welfare and happiness of all mankind. ”

“ While the result of the contest is so honourable [207] and advantageous to us and to posterity, it is to be lamented that those moral and religious duties so essential to the order of society and the permanent happiness of mankind, have been too much neglected. To recover them into practice, the life and conduct of every good man should be a constant example. ”

“ According to the physical sanction, if you live a temperate life, you will be healthy. You will have the physical reward of your moral goodness. Health is almost essential to success. Hence, if you would be successful, live a good life. ”

“ That it is not so difficult to live the life which leads to heaven as some suppose, may be seen from the following considerations. Who cannot live a civil and moral life?—for every one is initiated into it from infancy, and is acquainted with it from living in the world. ”

“ So far as morality is concerned, millions of the inhabitants of the earth live according to the best light they have—according to the best knowledge they possess. I have told you frequently that they will receive according to their works; and all who live according to the best principles in their possession, or that they can understand, will receive peace, glory, comfort, joy, and a crown that will be far beyond what they are anticipating. ”