Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 33

RULE AS MOTHER OR AS CHILD.-There is one condition that gives birth to rules, another to which rules give birth.

393.

COMEDY.-We sometimes earn honour or love for actions and achievements which we have long since sloughed as the snake sloughs his skin. We are hereby easily seduced into becoming the comic actors of our own past, and into throwing the old skin once more about our shoulders-and that not merely from vanity, but from good-will towards our admirers.

394.

A MISTAKE OF BIOGRAPHERS.-The small force that is required to launch a boat into the stream must not be confounded with the force of the stream that carries the boat along. Yet this mistake is made in nearly all biographies.

395.

NOT BUYING TOO DEAR.-The things that we buy too dear we generally turn to bad use, because we have no love for them but only a painful recollection.

Thus they involve a twofold drawback.

396.

THE PHILOSOPHY THAT SOCIETY ALWAYS NEEDS.-The pillars of the social structure rest upon the fundamental fact that every one cheerfully contemplates all that he is, does, and attempts, his sickness or health, his poverty or affluence, his honour or insignificance, and says to himself, "After all, I would not change places with any one!"-Whoever wishes to add a stone to the social structure should always try to implant in mankind this cheerful philosophy of contentment and refusal to change places.

397.

THE MARK OF A n.o.bLE SOUL.-A n.o.ble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and alt.i.tude.

398.

GREATNESS AND ITS CONTEMPLATOR.-The n.o.blest effect of greatness is that it gives the contemplator a power of vision that magnifies and embellishes.

399.

BEING SATISFIED.-We show that we have attained maturity of understanding when we no longer go where rare flowers lurk under the th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t hedges of knowledge, but are satisfied with gardens, forests, meadows, and ploughlands, remembering that life is too short for the rare and uncommon.

400.

ADVANTAGE IN PRIVATION.-He who always lives in the warmth and fulness of the heart, and, as it were, in the summer air of the soul, cannot form an idea of that fearful delight which seizes more wintry natures, who for once in a way are kissed by the rays of love and the milder breath of a sunny February day.

401.

RECIPE FOR THE SUFFERER.-You find the burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. When the sufferer finally thirsts after and seeks the river of Lethe, then he must become a _hero_ to be certain of finding it.

402.

THE JUDGE.-He who has seen another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge, and as it were his evil conscience.

403.

THE UTILITY OF GREAT RENUNCIATION.-The useful thing about great renunciation is that it invests us with that youthful pride through which we can thenceforth easily demand of ourselves small renunciations.

404.

HOW DUTY ACQUIRES A GLAMOUR.-You can change a brazen duty into gold in the eyes of all by always performing something more than you have promised.