FRAGMENTS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ingersoll, Robert Green and Widger, David
Dickens wrote for homes—Thackeray for clubs. Byron did not care for the fireside—for the prattle of babes—for the smiles and tears of humble life. He was touched by grandeur rather than goodness,—loved storm and crag and the wild sea. But Burns lived in the valley, touched by the joys and griefs of lowly lives.
Imagine amethysts, rubies, diamonds, emeralds and opals mingled as liquids—then imagine these marvelous glories of light and color changed to a tone, and you have the wondrous, the incomparable voice of Scalchi.
THE ORGAN.—The beginnings—the timidities—the half thoughts—blushes—suggestions—a phrase of grace and feeling—a sustained note—the wing on the wind—confidence—the flight—rising with many harmonies that unite in the voluptuous swell—in the passionate tremor—rising still higher—flooding the great dome with the soul of enraptured sound.
NEW MEXICO is a most wonderful country. It is a ragged miser with billions of buried treasure. It looks as if Nature had guarded her silver and gold with enough desolation to deter all but the brave.
WHY SHOULD THE INDIAN SUMMER of a life be lost—the long, serene, and tender days when earth and sky are friends? The falling leaves disclose the ripened fruit—and so the flight of youth with dreams and fancies should show the wealth of bending bough.
Give milk to babes, and wine to youth. But for old age, when ghosts of more than two-score years are wandering on the traveled road, the fragrant tea, that loosens gossip's tongue, is best.—December 25,1892.
[From a letter thanking a friend for a Christmas present of a chest of tea.]
ON MEMORIAL DAY our hearts blossom in gratitude as we lovingly remember the brave men upon whose brows Death, with fleshless hands, placed the laurel wreath of fame.
THE SOUL IS AN ARCHITECt—it builds a habitation for itself—and as the soul is, is the habitation. Some live in dens and caves, and some in lowly homes made rich with love, and overrun with vine and flower.
SCIENCE at last holds with honest hand the scales wherein are weighed the facts and fictions of the world. She neither kneels nor prays, she stands erect and thinks. Her tongue is not a traitor to her brain. Her thought and speech agree.
THE NEGRO who can pass me in the race of life will receive my admiration, and he can count on my friendship. No man ever lived who proved his superiority by trampling on the weak.
RELIGION is like a palm tree—it grows at the top. The dead leaves are all orthodox, while the new ones and the buds are all heretics.
MEMORY is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.
HOPE is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
THE FIRES OF THE NEXT WORLD sustain the same relation to churches that those in this world sustain to insurance companies.
Now and then there arises a man who on peril's edge draws from the scabbard of despair the sword of victory.
The falling leaf that tells of autumn's death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.
Vice lives either before Love is born, or after Love is dead.
Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest.
I believe that finally man will go through the phase of religion before birth.
When shrill chanticleer pierces the dull ear of morn.
Orthodoxy is the refuge of mediocrity.
The ocean is the womb of all that will be, the tomb of all that has been.
Jealousy never knows the value of a fact.
Envy cannot reason, malice cannot prophesy.
Love has a kind of second sight.
I have never given to any one a sketch of my life. According to my idea a life should not be written until it has been lived.—July 1, 1888.