That you can not serve God and Mammon is a poor excuse for not serving God. A fool's tongue is not so noisy but the wise can hear his ear commanding them to silence. If the Valley of Peace could be reached only by the path of love, it would be sparsely inhabited. To the eye of failure success is an accident with a presumption of crime. Wearing his eyes in his heart, the optimist falls over his own feet, and calls it Progress. You can calculate your distance from Hell by the number of wayside roses. They are thickest at the hither end of the route. The world was made a sphere in order that men should not push one another off, but the landowner smiles when he thinks of the sea. Let not the night on thy resentment fall: Strike when the wrong is fresh, or not at all. The lion ceases if his first leap fail-- 'Tis only dogs that nose a cooling trail. Having given out all the virtues that He had made, God made another. "Give us that also," said His children. "Nay," He replied, "if I give you that you will slay one another till none is left. You shall have only its name, which is Justice." "That is a good name," they said; "we will give it to a virtue of our own creation." So they gave it to Revenge. The sea-bird speeding from the realm of night Dashes to death against the beacon-light. Learn from its evil fate, ambitious soul, The ministry of light is guide, not goal. While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide. "O dreadful Death, why veilest thou thy face?" "To spare me thine impetuous embrace." He who knows himself great accepts the truth in reverent silence, but he who only believes himself great has embraced a noisy faith. Life is a little plot of light. We enter, clasp a hand or two, and go our several ways back into the darkness. The mystery is infinitely pathetic and picturesque. Cheerfulness is the religion of the little. The low hills are a-smirk with flowers and greenery; the dominating peaks, austere and desolate, holding a prophecy of doom. It is not to our credit that women like best the men who are not as other men, nor to theirs that they are not particular as to the nature of the difference. In the journey of life when thy shadow falls to the westward stop until it falls to the eastward. Thou art then at thy destination. Seek not for happiness--'tis known To hope and memory alone; At dawn--how bright the noon will be! At eve--how fair it glowed, ah, me! Brain was given to test the heart's credibility as a witness, yet the philosopher's lady is almost as fine as the clown's wench. "Who art thou, so sorrowful?" "Ingratitude. It saddens me to look upon the devastations of Benevolence." "Then veil thine eyes, for I am Benevolence." "Wretch! thou art my father and my mother." Death is the only prosperity that we neither desire for ourselves nor resent in others.