The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths,--all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason.
This was my prayer: an adequate portion of land with a garden and a spring of water and a small wood to complete the picture. ( Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus, hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aqu? fons et paulum silv? super his foret. ) [ Satir?, vi, 1. ]
With the people of court the tongue is the artery of their withered life, the spiral-spring and flag-feather of their souls.--_Richter._
Friends, like mushrooms, spring up in out-of-the-way places.
Chi vuol dell' acqua chiara, vada alla fonte=--He who wants the water pure must go to the spring-head.
Washington acted as the representative of the needs, the ideas, the enlightened men, the opinions of his age; he supported, not thwarted, the stirrings of intellect; he desired only what he had to desire, the very thing to which he had been called: from which derives the coherence and longevity of his work. That man who struck few blows because he kept things in proportion has merged his existence with that of his country: his glory is the heritage of civilisation; his fame has risen like one of those public sanctuaries where a fecund and inexhaustible spring flows.
There is a large and secret brotherhood in this world, the members of which easily recognise each other, without any visible outward sign. It is the band of mourners. The members of this brotherhood need not necessarily wear mourning; they can even rejoice with the joyful, and they seldom sigh or weep when others see them. But they recognise and understand each other, without uttering a word, like tired wanderers who, climbing a steep mountain, overtake other tired wanderers, and pause, and then silently go on again, knowing that they all hope to see the same glorious sunset high up above. Their countenances reflect a soft moonlight; when they speak, one thinks of the whispering of the leaves of a beech forest after a warm spring shower, and as the rays of the sun light up the drops of dew with a thousand colours, and drink them up from the green grass, a heavenly light seems to shine through the tears of the mourners, to lighten them, and lovingly kiss them away. Almost every one, sooner or later, enters this brotherhood, and those who enter it early may be considered fortunate, for they learn, before it is too late, that _all_ which man calls his own is only lent him for a short time, and the ivy of their affections does not cling so deeply and so strongly to the old walls of earthly happiness.
Let us leave to God and to truth the care of our justification, without trying to excuse ourselves, and peace will truly spring up within us.-- VEN. JOHN TAULER.
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure.
Spiritual music can only spring from discords set in unison; but for evil there were no good, as victory is only possible by battle.
Rivers need a spring.
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were I have not seen As others saw I could not bring My passions from a common spring From the same source I have not taken My sorrow I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone And all I lov'd I lov'd alone.
The spring can be apprehended only while it is flowing.
From haunted spring and dale Edg'd with poplar pale The parting genius is with sighing sent.
Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears Her snaky crest.
Knowledge is a perennial spring of wealth, ... and of itself is riches.
He will be born at Bethlehem. Micah v. He will appear chiefly in Jerusalem, and will spring from the family of Judah and of David.
The spirit of truth is the life-spring of all religion, and where it exists it must manifest itself, it must plead, it must persuade, it must convince and convert.
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
Poetry incorporates those spirits which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; and sheds the perfume of those flowers which spring up but never bear any seed.
The life of every man is as the well-spring of a stream, whose small beginnings are indeed plain to all, but whose ulterior course and destination, as it winds through the expanses of infinite years, only the omniscient can discern.
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? Oh when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.
People ask what can be gained by a comprehensive study of religions, by showing that, as yet, no race has been discovered without some word for what is not visible, not finite, not human, for something superhuman and divine. Some theologians go even so far as to resent the discovery of the universality of such a belief. They are anxious to prove that human reason alone could never have arrived at a conception of God. They would much rather believe that God has left Himself without witness than that a belief in something higher than the Finite could spring up in the human heart from gratitude to Him who gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unmask her beauty to the moon: Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes: The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off — at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream; but what am I? An infant crying in the night; An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.
In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse; The flowering branches are of themselves, some short, some long.
The Jews had grown old in these earthly thoughts, that God loved their father Abraham, his flesh, and all that would spring from it; that for this reason he had multiplied them, and set them apart from all other peoples, without allowing them to intermingle; that when they were languishing in Egypt he brought them out with many wonderful signs in their favour; that he fed them with manna in the wilderness, and brought them out into a very fat land; that he gave them kings and a well-built temple, there to offer beasts before him, by the shedding of whose blood they were purified; that at last he would send Messiah to make them masters of the whole world, and foretold the time of his coming.
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
Words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring.
Great acts grow out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from great principles, working changes in society and tearing it up by the roots.
Wit is of the true Pierian spring, that can make anything of anything.
La carriere des lettres est plus epineuse que celle de la fortune. Si vous avez le malheur d'etre mediocre, voila des remords pour la vie; si vous reussissiez, voila des ennemis; vous marchez sur le bord d'un abime entre le mepris et la haine=--A literary career is a more thorny path than that which leads to fortune. If you have the misfortune not to rise above mediocrity, you feel mortified for life; and if you are successful, a host of enemies spring up against you. Thus you find yourself on the brink of an abyss between contempt and hatred.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, / Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; / Another race the following spring supplies; / They fall successive, and successive rise.
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
In heaven the angels are advancing continually to the spring-time of their youth, so that the oldest angel appears the youngest.
There are moments in our life when those who seek most earnestly after God think they are forsaken of God; when they hardly venture to ask themselves, Do I then believe in God, or do I not? Let them not despair, and let us not judge harshly of them; their despair may be better than many creeds.... Honest doubt is the deepest spring of honest faith; only he who has lost can find.
The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in the felicity of lighting on good education.
"ALL THE DAYS"--in winter days, when joys are fled; in sunless days, when the clouds return again and again after rain; in days of sickness and pain; in days of temptation and perplexity, as much as in days when the heart is as full of joy as the woodlands in spring are full of song. That day never comes when the Lord Jesus is not at the side of His saints. Lover and friend may stand afar, but He walks with them through the fires; He fords with them the rivers; He stands by them when face to face with the lion. We can never be alone. We must always add His resources to our own when making our calculations.--_F. B. Meyer._
It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.--_George Eliot._
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend, / Path, motive, guide, original and end.
Evil events from evil causes spring.
Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus ?stas=--Here (in Italy) is ceaseless spring, and summer in months in which summer is alien.
If we do a thing because we think it is our duty, we generally fail; that is the old law which makes slaves of us. The real spring of our life, and of our work in life, must be love--true, deep love--not love of this or that person, or for this or that reason, but deep human love, devotion of soul to soul, love of God realised where alone it can be, in love of those whom He loves. Everything else is weak, passes away; that love alone supports us, makes life tolerable, binds the present together with the past and future, and is, we may trust, imperishable.
Cheerfulness opens, like spring, all the blossoms of the inward man.
It is from the difference we feel between the finitude of fact and the infinitude of fantasy that all the evils spring which torment humanity.
On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
February 26 Inferior Misgivings about Jesus Sir, Thou hast nothing to draw with. John 4:11 “I am impressed with the wonder of what God says, but He cannot expect me really to live it out in the details of my life!” When it comes to facing Jesus Christ on His own merits, our attitude is one of pious superiority—“Your ideals are high and they impress us, but in touch with actual things, it cannot be done.” Each of us thinks about Jesus in this way in some particular. These misgivings about Jesus start from the amused questions put to us when we talk of our transactions with God—“Where are you going to get your money from? How are you going to be looked after?” Or they start from ourselves when we tell Jesus that our case is a bit too hard for Him. “It is all very well to say ‘Trust in the Lord,’ but a man must live, and Jesus has nothing to draw with—nothing whereby to give us these things.” Beware of the pious fraud in you which says—“I have no misgivings about Jesus, only about myself.” None of us ever had misgivings about ourselves; we know exactly what we cannot do, but we do have misgivings about Jesus. We are rather hurt at the idea that He can do what we cannot. My misgivings arise from the fact that I ransack my own person to find out how He will be able to do it. My questions spring from the depths of my own inferiority. If I detect these misgivings in myself, let me bring them to the light and confess them—“Lord, I have had misgivings about Thee, I have not believed in Thy wits apart from my own; I have not believed in Thine Almighty power apart from my finite understanding of it.
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.--_George Eliot._
When We Want God to Breathe New Life into Our Marriage Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ISAIAH 43:18-19 WE ALL HAVE TIMES when we know we need new life in our marriage. We feel the strain, the tension, the sameness, or possibly even the subtle decay in it. When there is so much water under the bridge over what seems like a river of hurt, apathy, or preoccupation, we know we cannot survive the slowly and steadily rising flood without the Lord doing a new thing in both of us. The good news is that God says He will do that. He is the God of new beginnings, after all. But it won’t happen if we don’t make a choice to let go of the past. We have been made new if we have received Jesus. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But in a marriage, it is way too easy to hang on to the old disappointments, misunderstandings, disagreements, and abuses. It becomes a wilderness of hurtful memories we cling to because we don’t want to be hurt, disappointed, misunderstood, disregarded, fought with, or abused again. Hanging on to old patterns of thought and negative memories keeps them fresh in your mind. And you don’t let your husband forget them, either. You remain mired in them because you don’t feel the situation has been resolved—and it still hurts. Only God can give you and your husband a new beginning from all that has gone on in the past. Only He can make a road in the wilderness of miscommunication and misread intentions, and make a cleansing and restoring river to flow in the dry areas of your relationship. Everyone needs new life in their marriage at certain times. And only the God of renewal can accomplish that. My Prayer to God LORD, I ask that You would do a fresh work of Your Spirit in our marriage. Make all things new in each of us individually and also together. Dissolve the pain of the past where it is still rising up in us to stifle our communication and ultimately our hope and joy. Wherever we have felt trapped in a wilderness of our own making, carve a way out of it for us and show us the path to follow. If there are rigid and dry areas between us that don’t allow for new growth, give us a fresh flow of Your Spirit to bring new vitality into our relationship. Help us to stop rehearsing old hurtful conversations that have no place in any life committed to the God of new beginnings. Sweep away all the old rubble of selfishness, stubbornness, blindness, and the inability to see beyond the moment or a particular situation. Only You can take away our painful memories so that we don’t keep reliving the same problems, hurts, or injustices. Only You can resurrect love, excitement, and hope where they have died. Help us to forgive fully and allow each other to completely forget. Help us to focus on Your greatness in us, instead of each other’s faults. Holy Spirit, breathe new life into each of us and into our marriage today.
An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labour, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, / Sae dauntingly gaed he; / He play'd a spring, and danced it round, / Beneath the gallows-tree.
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of, for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in the field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and camp-fires of prayer.--_Chapin._
It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy.
_Perpetuity._--Let it be considered that from the beginning of the world the expectation or the worship of the Messiah has subsisted without a break; that there have been men who said that God had revealed to them the future birth of a Redeemer who should save his people; that afterwards came Abraham saying he had had a revelation that the Messiah was to spring from him by a son who should be born; that Jacob declared that of his twelve sons the Messiah would spring from Judah; that Moses and the prophets then came to declare the time and the manner of his advent; that they said their law was only provisional till that of the Messiah, that it should last till then but the other should endure eternally; that thus either their law or that of the Messiah, of which it was the promise, would be always upon earth; that in fact it has always endured; that at last Jesus Christ has come with all the circumstances foretold. How wonderful is this!
Industrial Capitalism may be defined as the corruption of a system which has always been admitted by European men — the system of private property. It has flourished under the protection which law and custom have extended to private property in essence, yet it has degraded property, allowing the swallowing up of the small man by the big one and the concentration of control in few and unworthy hands. Nevertheless, from the idea of private property did it spring, and by the remaining sanctity of private property is it protected. So also is it with that accompaniment of private property as an institution, the freedom of the family and the individual; freedom to make contracts and decide upon one’s own activities. The great proletarian body of working men, now in such violent protest against the capitalist system, owe their existence to such freedom — though by the very exercise of that freedom they have largely lost it. They were free to accept such and such wages, or to refuse them; to drive their own bargain; in practice this has reduced them to the half-slavery we see around us. But freedom is still our social theory — and by its very operation we are creating those great monopolies which are the negation of freedom. Most men who protest against modern capitalism would still preserve property and freedom. Some, more clear-sighted than the rest, demand reforms which shall re-establish the old freedom and the old well-divided property among men and undo the evils of modern capitalism by returning to what were always the first principles of our civilization. But there is another spirit abroad which would undo the evils of capitalism by destroying the right to property and by destroying freedom. It would vest control in the officers of the State, reducing all men to a common slavery for the advantage of equal distribution and for ending the existing injustice. That demand, growing in volume, successfully rooted at last in one great state — Russia — made openly by small well-organized minorities on every side, threatens the very nature of our society: and against the Communist and his ideal society is now at war. [ Cranmer: Archbishop of Canterbury 1533 – 1556 . Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1931, pp. 58-59.]
Vigor ?tatis fluit ut flos veris=--The vigour of manhood passes away like a spring flower.
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, / That, in the merry months of spring, / Delighted me to hear thee sing, / What comes o' thee? / Where wilt thou cower thy chittering wing, an' close thy e'e?
Is. xlii. 9. "Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them."
Almost all our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.
Look upon every day, O youth, as the whole of life, not merely as a section, and enjoy the present without wishing, through haste, to spring on to another.
_Nature._--Nature has placed us so truly in the centre, that if we alter one side of the balance we alter also the other. This makes me believe that there is a mechanism in our brain, so adjusted, that who touches one touches also the contrary spring.
With the meal there was karaoke. As the Chinese waiters brought the food, everyone at the restaurant sang “shanson,” the gravelly, syrupy gangster ballads that have become some of Russia’s favorite pop music. Shanson reflect the gangsters’ journeys to the center of Russian culture. These used to be underground, prison songs, full of gangster slang, tales of Siberian labor camps and missing your mother. Now every taxi driver and grocery plays them. “Vladimirsky Tsentral” is a wedding classic. Tipsy brides across the country in cream-puff wedding dresses and high, thin heels slow-dance with their drunker grooms: “The thaw is thinning underneath the bars of my cell / but the Spring of my life has passed so fast.” At the Chinese restaurant Miami Stas sang along too, but he seemed too meek, too obliging to be a gangster.
And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in whom the innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to spring into full vigour, and through whom the human race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty: so there have been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordinary mankind could never have attained: though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision, which lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world.
The clouds treat the sea as if it were a mill-pond or a spring-run, too insignificant to make any exceptions to.
And 't is my faith, that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring, Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
This neglect of a matter in which themselves are concerned, their eternity, and their all, makes me angry rather than compassionate; it astonishes and terrifies me, it is to me something monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual devotion. I mean on the contrary that such a feeling should spring from principles of human interest and self-love; and for this we need see no more than what is seen by the least enlightened persons.