Seeking the ideal has a long history, it produces many saints but few paradigm changes.
I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; I seek the things they sought.
The sword of reality is the saint's protection.
There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.
The And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.
But what is Whiggery? A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of a drunkard's eye.
The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints.
The true gentleman is God's servant. The world's master and his own man. Virtue is his business, study his recreation. Contentment his rest and happiness his reward. God is his father, Jesus Christ his Savior, the Saints his brethren, and all that need him his friends. Devotion is his chaplain, chastity his chamberlain, sobriety his butler, temperance his work, hospitality his housekeeper, providence his steward, purity his mistress of the house, and discretion his porter, to be let in and out as most fit; thus is his whole family made up of virtue and he is the master of the house.
If a pickpocket stands in a crowd of saints, all he sees are their pockets.
Men don't believe in the devil now, as their fathers used to do? They've forced the door of the broadest creed to let his majesty through; There isn't a print of his cloven foot, or a fiery dart from his brow, To be found in the earth or air today, for the world has voted so. But who is mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain, And loads the earth of each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain? Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell. If the devil isn't and never was? Won't somebody rise and tell? Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint, and digs the pits for his feet? Who sows the tares in the field of Time wherever God sows his wheat? The devil is voted not to be, and of course the thing is true; But who is doing the kind of work the devil alone should do? We are told he does not go about as a roaring lion now. But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row To be heard in home, in church, in state, to the earth's remotest bound, If the devil, by a unanimous vote. is nowhere to be found? Won't somebody step to the front forthwith and make his bow and show How the frauds and crime of the day spring up, for surely we want to know. The devil was fairly voted out, and of course the devil's gone; But simple people would like to know who carries his business on.
"Sir," Saint-Savin replied, "the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life. We should rather aspire to a heaven where only the planets live in eternal bliss, receiving neither rewards nor condemnations, but enjoying merely their own eternal motion in the arms of the void."
This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school.
Christmas Eve Saint Francis and Saint Benedight Blesse this house from wicked wight; From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good fellow Robin: Keep it from all evil spirits, Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets: From curfew time To the next prime.
It's called flowers wilt. It's called apples rot. It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot. It's called God don't answer prayers a lot. Alright, now you know.
Just as the results of inebriety are most painful to the habitually sober, and just as the greatest saints have often been the greatest sinners, so, when the first class brain does something stupid, the stupidity of that occasion is colossal.
It is through woman that ideality is born into the world and - what were man without her! There is many a man who has become a genius through a woman, many a one a hero, many a one a poet, many a one even a saint; but he did not become a genius through the woman he married, for through her he only became a privy councillor; he did not become a hero through the woman he married, for through her he only became a general; he did not become a poet through the woman he married, for through her he only became a father; he did not become a saint through the woman he married, for he did not marry, and would have married but one - the one whom he did not marry; just as the others became a genius, became a hero, became a poet through the help of the woman they did not marry.
In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed; In war, he mounts the warrior's steed; In halls, in gay attire is seen; In hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below and saints above; For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above: For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!
The greatest saints and sinners have been made The proselytes of one another's trade.
'Cause grace and virtue are within Prohibited degrees of kin; And therefore no true saint allows They shall be suffer'd to espouse.
Though he avoided outright endorsement of the view, fifth-century Church Father Saint Augustine was clearly familiar with the theory of the spherical earth: "They [those who believe that "there are men on the other side of the earth"] fail to observe that even if the world is held to be global or rounded in shape, or if some process of reasoning should prove this to be the case, it would still not necessarily follow that the land on the opposite side is not covered by masses of water."
When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it-lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew! And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair; They shall find real saints to draw from-Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are! -Rudyard Kipling
A man can be as truly a saint in a factory as in a monastery, and there is as much need of him in the one as in the other.
The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.
Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
The subject of the poem was Bridget of Kildare (450-523), a Christian lass among the Druids in Ireland. Saint Bridget was A problem child. Although a lass Demure and mild, And one who strove To please her dad, Saint Bridget drove The family mad. For here's the fault in Bridget lay: She WOULD give everything away. To any soul Whose luck was out She'd give her bowl Of stirabout; She'd give her shawl, Divide her purse With one or all. And what was worse, When she ran out of things to give She'd borrow from a relative. Her father's gold, Her grandsire's dinner, She'd hand to cold and hungry sinner; Give wine, give meat, No matter whose; Take from her feet The very shoes, And when her shoes had gone to others, Fetch forth her sister's and her mother's. She could not quit. She had to share; Gave bit by bit The silverware, The barnyard geese, The parlor rug, Her little niece-'s christening mug, Even her bed to those in want, And then the mattress of her aunt. An easy touch For poor and lowly, She gave so much And grew so holy That when she died Of years and fame, The countryside Put on her name, And still the Isles of Erin fidget With generous girls named Bride or Bridget. Well, one must love her. Nonetheless, In thinking of her Givingness, There's no denial She must have been A sort of trial Unto her kin. The moral, too, seems rather quaint. WHO had the patience of a saint, From evidence presented here? Saint Bridget? Or her near and dear?
