Persistence

“ If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistency of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness. But between these persistent concomitants there are relations, and these relations are changeable; so when we consider persistence and change, it is the persistence of particles of essentials and change of relations of particles of essentials. Only relations are changeable, essentials are persistent. ”

“ If only we will look at our Lord's life as a real human one, and apply the same tests and terms to it which we do to others, we shall see these characteristics plainly enough.
What do we call persistence which, in spite of all opposition, goes right on to the end, and is true to conscience and duty, even to death? ”

“ In the future, it seems, there is something for us; and for the present also, which is more germane to our matter, we have discovered some precepts about ‘hope, light, and persistence,’ which we intend to make the most of. ”

“ Steadiness of purpose under adverse or confusing circumstances is called persistence, courage, loyalty, or zeal, with {96} differences of meaning that reflect the nature either of the purpose or the circumstances. ”

“ At all events, it reminds us, if there he any materials for reflection within us, of the brevity of our span of life, and of the littleness of its aims; a visible Eternity seeming to lie before us, in the presence of which we are humbled. ”

“ Understand that this casual, personal life which now comes into being and to-morrow is no more can have no permanence, that no external means, no construction of it can give it consecutiveness and permanence. ”

“ I stop to say that, during the months past, as before, her life had gone sweetly, pleasantly, without ruffle or labor or care or sickness, or division, even, into hours and days and nights,—a flowing onward, like time,—an existence so serenely perfect as not to be a subject of consciousness. ”

“ The psychological field, as restricted to sense-objects and passing emotions, is the minor permanence, barely rescued from the nonentity of mere change; and the mind is the major permanence, permeating that complete field, whose endurance is the living soul. ”

“ Sufficiency shuts us in but till the man of the world—never prefigured, as I say, only welcomed on the spot—appears; when we see at once how much we have wanted him. When we fail of that acknowledgment, that sense as of a tension, an anxiety or an indigence relieved, it is of course but that the extraordinary set of circumstances, or above all the extraordinary time of life I speak of, has indeed intervened. ”

“ If in one act, — for one day, — you can do right, let that live like a point of light in your memory; for if you have done well once you can again. If you fall, do not lie grovelling; but rise upon your feet once more, and struggle bravely on. And if aroused conscience makes you suffer keenly, have patience to bear it. ”

“ Hence his conclusion followed at once: the world of Being is the world of permanence. In the world of permanence there is and can be no change, otherwise the permanent would not be the permanent; therefore, in the world of Being there is and can be no change. ”

“ Time, and the labours of his successors, have done for him what the span of one man's life—and span too, we may say, of one man's intellect, capacious as his undoubtedly was—prevented him doing for himself. ”

“ HISTORY.
Among the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the continuity of time. This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects. We may think to ourselves: Would there could be some halting-place in life, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift by us. ”

“ You, at least, I think, are too brave for that kind of comfort. Does it not seem a little grasping to ask for eternity, because we have fifty years of action? And an eternity of passivity, because we have not done well with action? ”

“ In the quiet hours when the puzzling reflection of former days, like a blurred mirror, projects beyond me the figure of my present existence, I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself Life has adapted itself even to this form. ”

“ All these things seemed to have happened so long ago, and yet we were living still. Living, did I say? Ay, if such an existence as ours could be called a life, fourteen of us were living still. Who would be the next to go? ”

“ Thus, too, does more life come to me from contacts in the common round of action. And, I repeat, every truth thus gained expands a moment of time into illimitable being,—positively enlarges my existence, and endows me with a quality which time cannot weaken or destroy. ”

“ To others there is a long history of repeated effort and repeated failures and then—one day there comes a feeling of power, perhaps through a great love, a great cause, a sermon heard, a chance sentence, or a bitter experience, and then, like a religious conversion, the tracks of the old habit are obliterated, never to be used again. ”

“ And if you suppose this to be merely a movement of zeal, and not a truth founded on experience, examine what passes every day before you; view all the souls who have grown old in the world, and who, through age alone, have withdrawn from its pleasures. ”

“ It is rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative values—the permanence of memory. ”

“ Permanent not Temporary:—you do not hire the mere redcoated fighter by the day, but by the score of years' Permanence, persistance is the first condition of all fruitfulness in the ways of men. The 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hindrances, discouragements and 'impossibilities:' it is this that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak ”

“ But in regard to this matter, I may be permitted to remark in passing that most of us miss our cue in the business of living, whether we are escorted by the best intentions or a few valorous vices. And my theory is that if we live long enough, we shall hear the Prompter in time to make a good ending. If we do not, there is a considerable stretch of eternity before us where no doubt adjustments may be made with a wider mind. ”

“ Here we stand, having grown from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, marching from our very cradles into our graves. The changes that come naturally upon us we bear, if we are wise, with patience and resignation ”

“ The point was that we moved so oddly and consistently—as it was our only form of consistency—over our limited pasture, never straying to nibble in the strange or the steep places. What was the matter with us under this spell, and what the moral might have been for our case, are issues of small moment, after all, in face of the fact of our mainly so brief duration. It was given to but few of us to be taught by the event, to be made to wonder with the last intensity what had been the matter. ”

“ We find from common experience, in our actions as well as reasonings, that a constant perseverance in any course of life produces a strong inclination and tendency to continue for the future; tho’ there are habits of inferior degrees of force, proportioned to the inferior degrees of steadiness and uniformity in our conduct. ”

“ But experience at any moment shows how I am conscious of my own deeds, of my progress, of my acts of attention, and of my approaches to selfhood in any way, in the form of a discrete series, in which one stage or act of life is followed by the next. The principle of my life, as I come to myself, and, knowing what I want, proceed to do it, is a principle winning novelty through Recurrence. ”

“ Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and "Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building; it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life thinking of what might have been and forgetting the may be that lies before us. ”

“ Think of these mean, squalid surroundings in which a life of positively ceaseless toil must be lived, the patience and long-suffering with which it is endured, the silent martyrdom of monotonous, unrelieved existence prolonged over long years. ”

“ Gradually he spoke of himself, his aspirations, his plans for the future with its seemingly infinite possibilities all gone now. “There is no use in longer deceiving myself. My future in this world lies in the past.” ”

“ Thus it is founded on the very nature of things, and on a right and sound state of human feeling, that a change from a year of plenty to one of want and barrenness should be borne with patience and resignation. ”

“ When they who go before
Go furnished—or because their span was brief,
When in the acquist of what is life’s true gage,
Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore,
They had fulfilled already a long age. ”

“ For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. ”

“ But if we could go back and live our lives over again, at how many of the turning points would we have the courage, or the desire, to take the other direction? How often would we care to risk any different combination of events than that which we had formerly dared? ”

“ You see, the real change—the real rest would have to be on the inside, and not on the outside. Nobody, no matter what their weight may be by the steelyards, can carry ’round such grand, hefty principles as I carry ’round, without gettin’ tired, or enjoy the lofty hopes, and desires, and aspirations that I enjoy, and meditate on all the sad, and mysterious, and puzzlin’ conundrums of the old world, as I meditate on ’em, without gettin’ fairly tuckered out. ”

“ Are their workings in the past or in the future; and are the more powerful of them those that are no longer, or those that are not yet? Is it to-day or to-morrow that moulds us? Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass? ”

“ The same law of continuity which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the present. ”

“ Since life is long, repressions accumulate, the mass of existence of feeling and desire tends to become composed entirely of these repressions, layer upon layer, with every interest in the aggregate striving to attain place in the daylight of consciousness. ”

“ The daily and hourly duties of life are so indifferently fulfilled by me, that I feel almost rebuked if my mind wanders either to the far past or future while the present, wherein lies my salvation, is comparatively unthought of. To tell you the truth, I find in the daily obligations to do and to suffer which come to my hands, a refuge from the mystery and uncertainty which veil all before and after life. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ Concerning ourselves and our destiny but one duty have we clearly understood: that we should hold fast--should endure. And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many centuries hence the world will look upon us and say:--These people are of a race that knows not how to perish ... ”

“ Let us now measure our actions by the standard of that scene, let us now look upon the things of time in the light of eternity, and we shall see them better as they are, and live more as we shall wish then we had done. It is not too late. We can secure yet what remains of our life. ”

“ It is enduring, a course of action, a process including memory, observation and foresight, a pressure forward, a glance backward and a look outward. It is of moral moment because it marks a transition in the direction of breadth and clarity of action or in that of triviality and confusion. Progress is present reconstruction adding fullness and distinctness of meaning, and retrogression is a present slipping away of significance, determinations, grasp. ”

“ The forty-five years that have passed between the two faces have trimmed the hair away from the temples and the brow, have softened the mouth, and have put patience into the eyes—the patience of a great faith often tried but never broken. ”

“ But these faculties, in envisaging the past or the ideal, envisage the eternal, and the man in whose mind they predominate is to that extent detached in his affections from the world of flux, from himself, and from his personal destiny. ”