Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/831

1858.]

Reformers, from being deeply impressed with the evils they seek to redress, and actively engaged in a warfare against them, are apt to contract a certain habit of denunciation, extending to persons and things at large, and by which their character for amiability is injuriously affected. This is particularly noticeable in that portion of the press devoted to Progress.

It is well to dress in your best when you go to press a request. It is not so easy to resist the solicitations of a well-dressed importunate.

Grace resides with the cultivated, but strength is the property of the people. Art with these has not emasculated Nature.

Intellectually, as many suffer from too much physical health as too little. A fat body makes a lean mind.

A thoroughly vigorous man will not actively belong to any associated body, except to rule in it. Not to control in its affairs is to have his individuality cut down to the standard of those that do. He must stamp himself upon the institution, or its enfeebling influence will be stamped upon him.

No man is competent greatly to serve the cause of truth till he has made audacity a part of his mental constitution.

There are some dangers that are to be courted,—courted and braved as a coy mistress is to be wooed, with all the more vigor as the day makes against us. When Fortune frowns upon her worthy wooer, it is still permitted him to think how pleasant it will be ere long to bask in her smiles.

In seasons when the energies flag and our ambition fails us, a rebuff is a blessing, by rousing us from inaction, and stirring us to more vigorous efforts to make good our pretensions.

Private worth is the only true basis of public prosperity. Still, ministers and moralists do but tinker at the regeneration of the world in merely recommending individual improvement. The most prolific cause of depravity is the social system that forms the character to what it is. The virtues, like plants, to flourish, must have a soil and air adapted to them. A plant at the seaside yields soda; the same plant grown inland produces potash. What society most needs, for its permanent advancement, is uniformity of inheritance.

A speaker should put his character into what he says. So many speakers, like so many faces, have no individuality in them.

There is often a striking contrast between a man's style of writing and of talking,—for which I offer this explanation: He ponders what he writes; he talks without system. As an author, therefore, he is sententious; as a conversationist, loose and verbose;—or the reverse of this may be true.

Language was given to us that we might say pleasant things to each other.

In literary performances, as in Gothic architecture, the taste of the age is largely in favor of the pointed styles. Our churches and our books must bristle all over with points, or they are not so much thought of.