"Seeing a large building," relates an English gentleman, "I asked a man
who looked like a journeyman weaver what it was. He told me a
grammar-school. 'But, sir,' he added, 'I think it would become you
better on the Lord's day morning to be reading your Bible at home, than
asking about public buildings.' I very quickly answered: 'My friend, you
have given me a piece of very good advice; let me give you one, and we
may both profit by our meeting. Beware of spiritual pride.'" "In one of
the debates on the Catholic question," said Lord Byron, "when we were
either equal or within one (I forget which), I had been sent for in
great haste to a ball, which I quitted, I confess, somewhat reluctantly,
to emancipate five millions of people." Some ladies bantering Selwyn on
his want of feeling, in attending to see Lord Lovat's head cut off,
"Why," he said, "I made amends by going to the undertaker's to see it
sewn on again." "I have," says Heine, "the most peaceable disposition.
My desires are a modest cottage with thatched roof--but a good bed, good
fare, fresh milk and butter, flowers by my window, and a few fine trees
before the door. And if the Lord wished to fill my cup of happiness, He
would grant me the pleasure of seeing some six or seven of my enemies
hanged on those trees. With a heart moved to pity, I would, before their
death, forgive the injury they had done me during their lives. Yes, we
ought to forgive our enemies--but not until they are hanged." Some would
pursue them after they are hanged. "Our measure of rewards and
punishments," says Thackeray, "is most partial and incomplete, absurdly
inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to continue it into the next
world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send
after them our impotent party verdicts, of condemnation or acquittal. We
set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in
comparison to that, Newton's mind, or Pascal's, or Shakespeare's, was
any loftier than mine; as if the ray which travels from the sun would
reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that
altitude, the tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive
and pitifully base that I say we should take no count of the
calculation, and it is a meanness to reckon the difference."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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