Those
who can avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of
private means, and even those who can, by abstinence,
reduce the necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year,
having the more liberty, have only the higher moral
obligation to be up and doing in the interest of man.
*
A man may have done well for years, and then he may fail;
he will hear of his failure. Or he may have done well for
years, and still do well, but the critic may have tired of
praising him, or there may have sprung up some new idol of
the instant, some 'dust a little gilt,' to whom they now
prefer to offer sacrifice. Here is the obverse and the
reverse of that empty and ugly thing called popularity.
Will any man suppose it worth gaining?
*
Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly
false upon the face of them for the sake of a half-truth
upon another subject which is accidentally combined with
the error, one of the grossest and broadest conveys the
monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and
hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the
truth is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly
and exactly uttered.
*
For such things as honour and love and faith are not only
nobler than food and drink, but indeed I think that we
desire them more, and suffer more sharply for their
absence.
*
There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and
prudential proverbs.
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