Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. Holmes. Sweet is the image of the breeding dove! A mother's love, how sweet the name! A noble, pure, and tender flame, Enkindled from above, To bless a heart of earthly mold; Mrs. Norton. The warmest love that can grow cold— This is a mother's love. Montgomery. When we see the flower-seeds wafted From the nurturing mother-tree, Tell we can, wherever planted, From its mother will remain. Mrs. S. J. Hale. Motives. IN the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions. Blair. We should often have reason to be ashamed of our most brilliant actions, if the world could see the motives from which they spring. Rochefoucauld. Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do. Bovee. He that does good for good's sake seeks neither praise nor reward, though sure of both at last. William Penn. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves him. Buddha. Nature. NATURE has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God-and defects, in order to show that she is only his image. Pascal. Read Nature; Nature is a friend to Truth; Nature is Christian, preaches to mankind, and bids dead matter aid us in our creed. Young. I follow Nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances. Cicero. He that follows Nature is never out of his way. Nature is sometimes subdued, but seldom extinguished. Bacon. Shakespeare paints so very closely to nature, and with such marking touches, that he gives the very look an actor ought to wear when he is on the scene. R. Cumberland. Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without nature is like the maimed; practice without both these is incomplete. As in agriculture, a good soil is first sought for, then a skillful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way, nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed. Plutarch. There is a signature of wisdom and power impressed upon the works of God, which evidently distinguishes them from the feeble imitations of men. Not only the splendor of the sun, but the glimmering light of the glow-worm, proclaims his glory. John Newton. The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature—were man as unerring in his judgments as Nature. Longfellow. Natural objects themselves, even when they make no claim to beauty, excite the feelings, and occupy the imagination. Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature. William von Humboldt. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches. God of the fair and open sky! How gloriously above us springs Bible. W. B. O. Peabody. In contemplation of created things, Milton. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Come forth into the light of things, Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Cowper. Wordsworth. Necessity. WHEN God would educate a man, he compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the Necessities rather than to the Graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolation. Celia Burleigh. |