Cheapness of nature can be redeemed only from one source--that of the invisible power on the divine side of life. By seeking this in silence and concentration for a little time each day all refinement and loveliness and charm can be achieved. It is the magic of life.--_The World Beautiful, Lilian Whiting._ I have wished to teach a single lesson, true alike to all men--the lesson of the saving of time.--_David Starr Jordan._ There are so many things--best things--that can only come when youth is past, that it may well happen to many of us to find ourselves happier and happier to the last.--_George Eliot._ This world is no blot for us Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good. --_Browning._ Poetry frequents and keeps habitable those upper chambers of the mind that open toward the sun’s rising.--_James Russell Lowell._ The individual who cultivates grievances, and who is perpetually exacting explanations of his assumed wrongs, can only be ignored, and left to the education of time and of development.... One does not argue or contend with the foul miasma that settles over stagnant water; one leaves it and climbs to a higher region, where the air is pure and the sunshine fair.--_Lilian Whiting._ “Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.” Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt come to them if it shall be necessary, having with thee the same reason which thou now usest for present things.--_Marcus Aurelius._ We hear much said of “environment.” We need to realize that environment should never be allowed to make the man, but that man should always, and always can, condition the environment. When we realize this, we will find that many times it is not necessary to take ourselves out of any particular environment, because we may yet have a work to do there; but by the very force we carry with us, we can so affect and change matters that we will have an entirely new set of conditions in an old environment.--_Ralph Waldo Trine._ FABLE. The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter “Little Prig”; Bun replied, “You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I’m not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I’ll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.” --_Emerson._ O the paralyzing effect of fear of evil! It surely doth make “cowards of us all.” It makes us pygmies where we might be giants, were we only free from it.--_H. Emilie Cady._ As you grow old, guard against the tendency to live more coarsely, to relax in your discipline. Obey your finest instincts. Be fastidious to the extreme of sanity.--_Thoreau._