Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 30

IMMIGRATION.--If you should turn back from this land to Europe the foreign ministers of the Gospel, and the foreign attorneys, and the foreign merchants, and the foreign philanthropists, what a robbery of our pulpits, our court rooms, our storehouses, and our beneficent inst.i.tutions, and what a putting back of every monetary, merciful, moral, and religious interest of the land! This commingling here of all nationalities under the blessing of G.o.d will produce in seventy-five or one hundred years the most magnificent style of man and woman the world ever saw. They will have the wit of one race, the eloquence of another race, the kindness of another, the generosity of another, the aesthetic taste of another, the high moral character of another, and when that man and woman step forth, their brain and nerve and muscle an intertwining of the fibres of all nationalities, nothing but the new electric photographic apparatus, that can see clear through body and mind and soul, can take of them an adequate picture.

--T. DEWITT TALMAGE.

IMMORTALITY.--Immortality is the glorious discovery of Christianity.

--CHANNING.

We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth; there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that pa.s.s before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever.--LYTTON.

It must be so--Plato, thou reasonest well-- Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.

--ADDISON.

Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.--SOUTHEY.

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies which invite me.--VICTOR HUGO.

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.--SOCRATES.

Immortality o'ersweeps all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, and peals, like the eternal thunder of the deep, into my ears this truth: Thou livest forever!--BYRON.

INDEPENDENCE.--It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.--COBBETT.

These two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together,--manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance.--WORDSWORTH.

Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill; We may be independent if we will.

--CHURCHILL.

Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, as long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.--POPE.

INDUSTRY.--Industry is a Christian obligation, imposed on our race to develop the n.o.blest energies, and insures the highest reward.

--E.L. MAGOON.

Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings.--PROVERBS 22:29.

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is ever to be attained without it.

--SIR J. REYNOLDS.

If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for, at the workingman's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for industry pays debts, while despair increaseth them.--FRANKLIN.

There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries and by all nations; it is the philosopher's stone, that turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers not want to break into its dwelling; it is the northwest pa.s.sage, that brings the merchant's ship as soon to him as he can desire. In a word, it conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution.

--CLARENDON.

The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality: that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything.--FRANKLIN.

The celebrated Galen said employment was nature's physician. It is indeed so important to happiness that indolence is justly considered the parent of misery.--COLTON.

In every rank, or great or small, 'Tis industry supports us all.

--GAY.

INFIDELITY.--There is but one thing without honor, smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,--insincerity, unbelief.

--CARLYLE.

Infidelity is one of those coinages,--a ma.s.s of base money that won't pa.s.s current with any heart that loves truly, or any head that thinks correctly. And infidels are poor sad creatures; they carry about them a load of dejection and desolation, not the less heavy that it is invisible. It is the fearful blindness of the soul.--CHALMERS.

A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand.

"Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."--HELPS.

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective gla.s.s, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the gla.s.s; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,--diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies G.o.d's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.--BISHOP HALL.

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of G.o.d.--RICHTER.

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.--MACAULAY.

When once infidelity can persuade men that they shall die like beasts, they will soon be brought to live like beasts also.--SOUTH.

INGRAt.i.tUDE.--If there be a crime of deeper dye than all the guilty train of human vices, it is ingrat.i.tude.--H. BROOKE.

Men may be ungrateful, but the human race is not so.--DE BOUFFLERS.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingrat.i.tude.

--SHAKESPEARE.

He that forgets his friend is ungrateful to him; but he that forgets his Saviour is unmerciful to himself.--BUNYAN.

You may rest upon this as an unfailing truth, that there neither is, nor never was, any person remarkably ungrateful, who was not also insufferably proud. In a word, ingrat.i.tude is too base to return a kindness, too proud to regard it, much like the tops of mountains, barren indeed, but yet lofty; they produce nothing; they feed n.o.body; they clothe n.o.body; yet are high and stately, and look down upon all the world.--SOUTH.

Ingrat.i.tude is always a kind of weakness. I have never seen that clever men have been ungrateful.--GOETHE.

You love a nothing when you love an ingrate.--PLAUTUS.

And shall I prove ungrateful? shocking thought! He that is ungrateful has no guilt but one; all other crimes may pa.s.s for virtues in him.

--YOUNG.

Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man.

--AUSONIUS.

Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the hideous ingrat.i.tude, of man.--NAPOLEON.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child.

--SHAKESPEARE.

One ungrateful man does an injury to all who stand in need of aid.