Reading circle

“ The WITCH, with strange gestures, draws a circle, and places singular things in it; mean-while the glasses begin to ring, the kettle to sound and make music. Finally, she brings a great book and places the monkeys in the circle, whom she uses as a reading-desk and to hold the torches. ”

“ We are here to-day for a practical question or two in connection with our work as local circles, and then to answer some questions relating to the exercises of the coming Saturday. It is a question of much importance to all who are connected with local circles: How may we promote profitable reading? A local circle is not designed for much reading, but is a place to guide people in reading at home ”

“ When other histories have been consulted new matter is presented by the leader or any other person. The blackboard, charts and maps are largely employed in illustrating and fixing the subject in the mind. The members of the circle are urged to ask questions on the subjects of review, and express their opinions. Short papers are also read by members of the circle on such parts of the reading as may be assigned them. By these means every part of the readings are carefully reviewed. ”

“ Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, — how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. ”

“ We are now confined to a circle, small indeed compared with the whole of human thought, but this circle is still a vast sphere when measured by the child's mind. Dark places of the human understanding, what rash hand shall dare to raise your veil? What pitfalls does our so-called science prepare for the miserable child. ”

“ I rather gather around myself, link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese, my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square—the circle is my own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty corners which it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the remainder of mankind. ”

“ Her brain seemed to her as a pool into which some thoughtless child that did what he liked had flung a stone, starting circle after circle, circles that grew and grew, spreading to the farther edge, and sobbing away into nothing because they could go no farther. ”

“ You seem to mark out for yourself a certain sphere, and if you go beyond it, you think you do yourself an injury. Thus, while you have an apparent movement, you are only describing a circle, whose centre and circumference is self. ”

“ It does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. ”

“ I like to think of all the points in a circle really feeling a placid satisfaction in the thought that they are equidistant from the centre! They are infinite in number, and so can well afford to despise the arrogance of a point within, and to ignore the envious murmurs of a point without! ”

“ There are circles of all sorts, professional, and social, and intellectual, and those who pass from one to another have to undergo mental adjustment before they can understand the language and partake in the momentum of these spheres. Such is the parsonic circle, such the sporting circle, such the circle of politicians, such the legal circle. Let a hunter pitch his rider in pink over a hedge into a ditchful of picnicing clergy and their wives and daughters, and he will be as unable to talk with them as they to entertain him. ”

“ Let me say rather, it would be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to feel a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. ”

“ Nay, has it not come in society to such a pass that the very presence of The Book on parlor table is already an evidence that the host is not a member of the circle which looks upon itself as the circle,—the select, the exclusive, the highest, in short? ”

“ When you sit in the circle, exerting every faculty of mind and body, with your hands on the table and your feet on the floor, all your brain forces escape through your extremities and are absorbed by the more receptive members of the circle. ”

“ Someone has shown forcibly by a graphic diagram the ideas we are most anxious to establish. In this diagram of Forces in Education, the circle represents the sum total of all those influences which tend to make the mind and character of the growing child. ”

“ The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in a circle is unexplained. I suppose it arises from the sympathy of the legs with the brain. Most people reason in a circle: their minds go round and round, always in the same track. ”

“ The simplest symbol of it is the circle, the line which returns into itself, not the straight line produced indefinitely; and the readiest way to find it is to consider the satisfaction of desire. There we have myself and its opposite, and the return from the opposite, the finding in the other nothing but self. ”

“ The same old story, the same old vicious circle, the everlastingly recurring mathematical view of things that cannot be treated mathematically; the fruitless attempt to measure the harmonious circle of the soul by the angular square of the book. What poor things our minds are, after all. ”

“ For the first, indeed, and most proximate circle is that which every one describes about his own mind as a centre, in which circle the body, and whatever is assumed for the sake of the body, are comprehended. ”

“ And we know that a Circle is a higher Being than a Straight Line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection.
Sphere. It is not for me to classify human faculties according to merit. Yet many of the best and wisest in Spaceland think more of the affections than of the understanding, more of your despised Straight Lines than of your belauded Circles. ”

“ And, moreover, were the circle drawn round each a very contracted one, every man of talent, every genius, in so far as he is in some degree a magician and an enchanter, possesses a secret entirely his own, whereby to perform prodigies within this circle and work wonders there. ”

“ My neighbour snatched his cap and pulled it down on to his nose.
'What do I find so awful?' he shouted. 'Why, this: the circle is the destruction of all independent development; the circle is a hideous substitute for society, woman, life; the circle... oh, wait a bit, I'll tell you what a circle is! A circle is a slothful, dull living side by side in common, to which is attached a serious significance and a show of rational activity ”

“ In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.
Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it took, would know the circle. ”

“ Rather do we think, in many cases at least, of the circumference of a circle, from different points of which these different varieties have started, all facing the same centre, all making an effort in that direction, but each approaching it only to the extent of its means, and to the extent also to which this central point has been illumined for it. In other words, instinct is everywhere complete, but it is more or less simplified, and, above all, simplified differently. ”

“ You should establish the circle:
You should melt the world
In a circle of lovers!
Heart burn, voice lull, raise me, lower me,
With the flame of the flagrant love I awaken:
That red flames stop-flowing through the lands,
Cheeks begin to redden in fraternal receiving,
And brotherly, in a solemn circle, through the world
The wave of the song of Understanding begins to bellow... ”

“ Ans The investigation of the quadrature of the circle indicates the knowledge of the four vulgar elements, which are themselves composed of elementary spirits or chief principles; as the circle, though round, is composed of lines, which escape the sight, and are seen only by the mind. ”

“ I can within myself correct the external appearances and impressions of objects, and advance, upon the reports and hints received by my senses, to form ideas of things that are not extant in matter. By seeing a material circle I may learn to form the idea of a circle, or figure generated by the revolution of a ray about its centre ”

“ By the large, conventional things, or customs, appear to be products of ideation or thinking. Now a band circle is clearly a scheme, a conception, that may well have originated within the mental activities of a single individual, a true psychic accident. ”

“ The circle, which is self-enclosed and at rest, and, qua substance, holds its own moments, is an immediate relation, the immediate, continuous relation of elements with their unity, and hence arouses no sense of wonderment. But that an accident as such, when out loose from its containing circumference,—that what is bound and held by something else and actual only by being connected with it,—should obtain an existence all its own, gain freedom and independence on its own account—this is the portentous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of pure ego. ”

“ A very pleasant and inspiring piece of news comes from the same circle. A young printer belonging to the circle became so much interested in his studies, and so anxious for further development that leaving his trade he has undertaken a college course. The circle did a kindly act when they presented to him that most necessary book for a student—Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. ”

“ SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MR. DANIEL WHEELWRIGHT.
CHAPTER I.
A DISQUISITION ON CIRCLES.
"In circle following circle."
The horse at the cider-mill; the mules in the press-room of the American Tract Society; and the watchman who walks his drowsy round until he falls asleep; are not the only beings that spend their lives in traversing a circle. ”

“ The circle, therefore, is the cause of ornament to all things, even to the last participations, and leaves nothing destitute of itself, since it supplies beauty, similitude, formation, and perfection to the universe. ”

“ It seems to me, sir, if we would invite from the locality in which we want to introduce a circle, one or two persons to visit our own circle and see the work we are doing, we might thus incite and be enabled to form a circle, taking the one or two members whom we have invited as the nucleus. ”

“ Every circle is larger than the earth. The pasteboard gives them an appearance of solidity which creates the mistaken impression that they are circular masses which really exist. When you tell the child that these are imaginary circles, he understands neither what he sees nor what you mean.
Shall we never learn to put ourselves in the child's place? We do not enter into his thoughts, but suppose them exactly like our own. Constantly following our own method of reasoning, we cram his mind not only with a concatenation of truths, but also with extravagant notions and errors. ”

“ Now, we cannot recommend that the players of a film story should always be shown running around in circles. And yet their separate actions, gestures and bodily movements in general, may often be so composed that they progress in a circular path, each movement tracing an arc of a circle which nowhere touches the frame of the picture. Such circularity of motions would give unity, balance, and repose. ”

“ Nature knows nothing of this precious law. Her figure is not the vertical line, nor even the spiral, but the circle—the vicious circle, according to Samuel Butler. 'Men eat birds, birds eat worms, worms eat men again.' Some stars are getting hotter, others cooler. ”

“ It was in the midst of one of his highest flights of eloquence, that a man, so aged as to walk with the greatest difficulty, entered the very centre of the circle, and took his stand directly in front of the speaker. ”

“ For similarly the uninstructed majority of mankind could not define a circle as a figure bounded by a line of which every point is equidistant from the centre: but nevertheless, when the definition is explained to them, they will accept it as expressing the perfect type of that notion of roundness which they have long had in their minds. ”

“ I pushed my way through the throng of women and boys, who made up the outer circle of spectators, and soon found myself among the men, who made way for me, until I reached a position from which I could see all that was going on within the circle about which they stood. ”

“ The world revolves the portion of a circle; yet why that circle of a sun-centre, or that wider circle within which both suns and earths revolve, or what the centre which controls the entire system of immensity may be, he dares not affirm. Our lives are miracles, yet we are habituated to them, and name them chance. ”