“Time Misspent” by Sir Aubrey de Vere (Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet, 1867) There is no remedy for time misspent;No healing for the waste of idleness,Whose very languor is a punishmentHeavier than active souls can feel or guess.O hours of indolence and discontent,Not now to be redeemed! ye sting not less,Because …
No man or woman is complete unto him or herself. Man is a gregarious species for this reason. We need one another. We, in this sense, complete one another.
I came across a fabulous piece of literature written by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in 1486 (at the age of 23), just six years before Columbus sailed to the Americas. Pico della Mirandola had a wonderful capacity for syncretism, a double-edged sword that likely lead to his eventual poisoning for challenging the status quo. The …
Will by Alfred Tennyson I "O well for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: For him nor moves the loud world's random mock Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound Who seems a promontory of rock, That compass'd round with turbulent sound In …
“Love is the divinest element in the human. It is God’s finest gift to man. It is the most powerful factor for good in the whole world. Under its protecting wings nestle all the virtues. In marriage it means that two face life together, with each other, for each other, content with whatever life may …
"This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote …
"A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor." ~ William Wordsworth Reactions to challenging those within your sphere of influence to think outside …
I am inclined to agree more with Theodore Roosevelt's assessment that courtesy is "as much a mark of a gentleman" than with Honore de Balzac's less encouraging assessment of courtesy being "only a thin veneer on the general selfishness." While the latter may be more predominantly the case, the former holds in it the promise …
"If a man receives a counterfeit dollar he does not straightway lose his faith in all money,—at least there are not such instances on record in this country. If he has a run of three or four days of dull weather he does not say 'the sun ceases to exist, there are surely no bright …
"Again, if all motion is always one long chain, and new motion arises out of the old in order invariable, and if the first-beginnings do not make by swerving a beginning of motion such as to break the decrees of fate, that cause may not follow cause from infinity, whence comes this freedom ('libera') in …
Gregory Hake 