We Should Be Slow To Mend, My
Friends, As Slow To Require Mending, "Not Hurling, According To
The Oracle, A Transcendent Foot Towards Piety." The Language Of
Excitement Is At Best Picturesque Merely.
You must be calm
before you can utter oracles.
What was the excitement of the
Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates? - or
whoever it was that was wise. - Enthusiasm is a supernatural
serenity.
"Men find that action is another thing
Than what they in discoursing papers read;
The world's affairs require in managing
More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed."
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the
causes of all past change in the present invariable order of
society. The greatest appreciable physical revolutions are the
work of the light-footed air, the stealthy-paced water, and the
subterranean fire. Aristotle said, "As time never fails, and the
universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor the Nile can have
flowed forever." We are independent of the change we detect.
The longer the lever the less perceptible its motion. It is the
slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero then will
know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with
him who waiteth _wisely_; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by
remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west. Be
assured that every man's success is in proportion to his
_average_ ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the
waters annually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some
freshet only.
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