The World's Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters by Various
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page 23 of 383 (06%)
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facts to ideas, are usually the champions of abstract notions. The more
intellectual nature trusts to an ethical theory; the more moral nature has an intellectualist morality. The centre of life is neither in thought, nor in feeling, nor in will; nor even in consciousness in so far as it thinks, feels, or wills; for a moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and yet escape us still. Far below our consciousness is our being, our substance, our nature. Those truths alone which have entered this profound region, and have become ourselves, and are spontaneous, involuntary, instinctive and unconscious--only these are really our life and more than our external possessions. Now, it is certain that we can find our peace only in life, and, indeed, only in eternal life; and eternal life is God. Only when the creature is one, by a unity of love, with his Creator--only then is he what he is meant to be. _The Secret of Perpetual Youth_ There are two degrees of pride--one, wherein a man is self-complacent; the other, wherein he is unable to accept himself. Of these two degrees, the second is probably the more subtle. The whole secret of remaining young in spite of years is to keep an enthusiasm burning within, by means of poetry, contemplation and charity, or, more briefly, by keeping a harmony in the soul. When everything is rightly ordered within us, we may rest in equilibrium with the work of God. A certain grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and order; a glowing mind and cloudless goodwill: these are, perhaps, the |
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