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“How can I close my eyes on so precious a night?”
“Truly, of such souls as hers are the kingdom of heaven.”
“One day—it was in 1842, and the springtide was struggling merrily with the May winds of New England—he stood at last in his own chapel in Providence, a priest of the Church.”
I recall standing on the porch of my Atlanta home as the Georgia pines held their breath against a sudden wind. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth and unspoken sorrow. We build our temples…
“A man cannot abuse anything but what is good in itself.”
“We have much trouble to break with one, when we no longer are in love.”
I miss my characters.
This feels like a rather peculiar admission. They don’t exist, after all. I invented them, I decided what they looked like, where they lived, what they said, whom they loved and what happened to them. If I wanted to spend more time with them, I suppose I could simply open a new document and start writing.
But it isn’t quite like that…
“He has a humorous and poetic side, too.”
You must let kindness soften your own hard edges when you speak to others today. Hold your tongue gently so that laughter might enter where fear has lived. Ask yourself if you have made room for poetry in the quiet hours of your day.
“Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own.”
I learned this while watching a man weep over his lost cloak, forgetting his mind remained safe. If you lose your body or name, do not let your choice follow suit. Guard your judgment as the only thing truly yours.
“Use thyself even unto those things that thou doest at first despair of.”
I remember watching a young officer try to lift a heavy shield with his left hand while his right held the reins, trembling and failing until he forced himself to practice in secret until the muscle obeyed without thought. It is the same with duty when it seems impossible; we despise the task because we do not yet know our own strength, yet the very act of trying rewires us…
“Why then are you troubled?”
“It is difficult even to perceive whether the horse is moving onward or standing still.”
I remember the crossing at Cauquenes in late September. The water was white and loud, rushing over stones that seemed to shift beneath us. I held my breath, gripping the reins until my knuckles turned white, yet the world blurred into a single grey roar. My head felt as if it were filled with water itself; I could not tell if we had advanced or if we were merely being…
“True grace arises from some kind of independence of mind.”
I have watched young ladies curtsy until their spines ache and speak in whispers to hide their thoughts. They learn that a trembling hand is charm, but I see it only as fear. When I look at children playing without regard for an audience, or the nobility who command money yet move with a stiff, practiced ease, I understand what real dignity looks like. It is not the polished surface…
“It is the Way of Heaven to diminish superabundance, and to supplement deficiency.”
I watched a river flood the low fields first, then recede to feed the parched banks upstream. The water does not hoard its power in the deep pools; it flows where there is need, leaving the overflowing places empty again. This is how things endure. When a man fills his cup while another’s is dry, the cup breaks and the ground hardens. I learned this watching the seasons turn grain…
“Truth in her dress finds facts too tight.
In fiction she moves with ease.”
I saw this when I wrote of a village woman, for the dry records of her life could not hold her spirit, yet the story told of her sorrow made me weep with those who never met her. Let us speak so that the truth breathes freely within our words.
“There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.”
I saw this folly when young scholars demanded absolute freedom from rules that shape character, forgetting that nature itself works within limits. One must accept the bounds of one’s time to grow strong, not break them in a frantic rush for what cannot be held.
“Our roots must go deep down into the universal if we would attain the greatness of personality.”
I watched a young tree planted in the garden struggle against the wind. Its branches were strong and green, yet it trembled because its hold on the earth was shallow. It wanted to rise high to touch the sun, but without deep roots drinking from the soil below, it could not stand tall. True greatness is not found in how far one reaches outward, but in how deeply one sinks…
“You do not afford virtue a solid immoveable base if you bid it stand on what is unsteady.”
The lamp flickered low in my study while Nero paced, his heavy boots echoing on the marble floor like thunder before a storm. He spoke of wealth as if it were stone, yet I saw him trembling when the door opened and the wind blew through the gap.
“The first quarter of life is so happy.”
“I never knew Mounsey approve of anything unfair or illiberal.”
I once sat in a room where the air was thick with hypocrisy, and I found myself nodding along to a man who claimed to champion liberty while stripping a servant of his wages for the smallest debt. My own tongue betrayed me; I did not see the rot until it was too late to stop my agreement. The cost was the silence that followed, a heavy, unspoken shame that…
“To define health and satiety, to penetrate their causes and conditions, is quite another thing from being well and satisfied.”
My friend, put down your books before the sun sets tonight. You have read many words about how to free your soul, yet you must ask yourself if you truly feel that freedom in your heart or only in your mind. Reading of renunciation does not make you detached; knowing the laws of drunkenness does not cure the man who is drunk.