The Guide sang: Nearly they stood who fall; Themselves as they look back See always in the track The one false step, where all Even yet, by lightest swerve Of foot not yet enslaved, By smallest tremor of the smallest nerve, Might have been saved. Nearly they fell who stand, And with cold after fear Look back to mark how near They grazed the Siren's land, Wondering that subtle fate, By threads so spidery fine, The choice of ways so small, the event so great, Should thus entwine. Therefore oh, man, have fear Lest oldest fears be true, Lest thou too far pursue The road that seems so clear, And step, secure, a hair-breadth bourne, Which, being once crossed forever unawares, Denies return.
C. S. LewisRelated topics
bourne choice clear cold fell fall false far fate fear fine foot forever guide great land lest man mark might near nerve once return road see should small stand step swerve thou thus tremor yet waysRelated quotes
O Petronius, thou hast seen what endurance and comfort that religion gives in misfortune, how much patience and courage before death; so come and see how much happiness it gives in ordinary, common days of life. People thus far did not know a God whom man could love, hence they did not love one another; and from that came their misfortune, for as light comes from the sun, so does happiness come from love. Neither lawgivers nor philosophers taught this truth, and it did not exist in Greece or Rome; and when I say, not in Rome, that means the whole world. The dry and cold teaching of the Stoics, to which virtuous people rally, tempers the heart as a sword is tempered, but it makes it indifferent rather than better.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
I love Mougouch [Gorky's wife]. What about papa Cézanne.. .I like the wheat fields the plough the apricots those flirts of the sun. And bread above all. My lever is such with the purple.. .About 194 feet away from our house [In Armenia] on the road to the spring my father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit.. .This garden was identified as the 'Garden of Wish Fulfillment' and often I had seen my mother and other village women opening their bosoms and taking their soft and dependable breasts in their hands to rub them on the rocks. Above all this stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun the rain the cold and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree.. [quote in 1942].
Arshile Gorky
I do not propose to say many words tonight. The time has come when action rather than speech is required. Eighteen months ago in this House I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war. I fear that I may not be able to avoid that responsibility. But, at any rate, I cannot wish for conditions in which such a burden should fall upon me in which I should feel clearer than I do to-day as to where my duty lies...We shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man-the German Chancellor, who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions.
Neville Chamberlain
Looking at the Temple and the Courts and the mountain road that winds below, we see this picture of human evolution, and the track along which the race is treading, and the Temple that is its goal... along that road round the mountain stands a vast mass of human beings, climbing indeed, but climbing so slowly, rising step after step; sometimes it seems as though for every step forward there is a step backward, and though the trend of the whole mass is upwards it mounts so slowly that the pace is scarcely perceptible. And this aeonian evolution of the race, climbing ever upwards, seems so slow and weary and painful that one wonders how the pilgrims have the heart to climb so long...
Annie Besant
In circumstances where the uninstructed and incurious eye can perceive neither novelty nor beauty, he who is imbued with a taste for natural science will everywhere discover an inexhaustible mine of pleasure and instruction, and new and stupendous proofs of the power and goodness of the Eternal! For every rock in the desert, every boulder on the plain, every pebble by the brook-side, every grain of sand on the sea-shore, is fraught with lessons of wisdom to the mind which is fitted to receive and comprehend their sublime import.
"From millions take thy choice,
In all that lives a guide to God is given;
Ever thou hear'st some guardian angel's voice,
When nature speaks of heaven!"
Gideon Mantell