“ Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought. ”
If you would understand your own age read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
~ Arthur Helps
Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits dinners concerts plays speeches pleadings essays sermons are too long. Pleasure and business labour equally under this defect or as I should rather say this fatal superabundance.
Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.
There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.
