They repeat, they rearrange, they
clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from
ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others;
and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see
it for ourselves, but with a singular change--that
monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce,
struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the
human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of
instruction.
*
Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple
pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue.
*
The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, not to be
successful; to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially,
not outwardly, respectable.
*
Practice is a more intricate and desperate business than
the toughest theorising; life is an affair of cavalry,
where rapid judgment and prompt action are alone possible
and right.
*
Each man should learn what is within him, that he may
strive to mend; he must be taught what is without him, that
he may be kind to others. It can never be wrong to tell
him the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he
goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering or
reproving others, all facts are of the first importance to
his conduct; and even if a fact shall discourage or corrupt
him, it is still best that he should know it; for it is in
this world as it is, and not in a world made easy by
educational suppression, that he must win his way to shame
or glory.
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