Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.
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LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilisation surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees there by a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
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Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known... this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
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If it all be for naught, for nothingness at last, Why does God make the world so fair? Why spill this golden splendor out across the western hills, And light the silver lamp of eve? Why give me eyes to see, and soul to love so strong and deep? Then, with a pang this brightness stabs me through, And wakes within rebellious voice to cry against all death? Why set this hunger for eternity to gnaw my heartstrings through, If death ends all? If death ends all, then evil must be good, Wrong must be right, and beauty ugliness. God is Judas who betrays His Son, And with a kiss, damns all the world to Hell, -- If Christ rose not again.
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Anybody who would like to travel as an archaeologist of mores and observe men instead of rocks could find an image of the century of Louis XV in some village in Provence, that of Louis XIV in Poitou, that of even more remote times in the far reaches of Brittany. Most of these cities have fallen from some splendor that historians, more preoccupied with dates than customs, no longer speak of, but whose memory lives on, such as in Brittany, where the national character scarcely accepts the forgetting of what this country is fundamentally about. . . All of these cities have their primitive character.
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That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
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But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.
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But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo the splendor of fame fades into nothing but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.
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'Two Days We Should Not Worry'
There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, Two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.
One of these days is Yesterday, with all its mistakes and cares, Its faults and blunders, its aches and pains.
Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday.
We cannot undo a single act we performed; We cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone forever.
The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow With all its possible adversities, its burdens, Its large promise and its poor performance; Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.
Tomorrow's sun will rise, Either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow, For it is yet to be born.
This leaves only one day, Today. Any person can fight the battle of just one day It is when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities Yesterday and Tomorrow that we break down.
It is not the experience of Today that drives a person mad, It is the remorse and bitterness of something which happened Yesterday And the dread of what Tomorrow may bring.
Let us, therefore, live but one day at a time.
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Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.
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Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender- these form the wealth of home.
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No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of ther beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
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Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.
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A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendor.
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Luke 16:19:
'There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.'
(NIV)
There was a certain rich man who [habitually] clothed himself in purple and fine linen and reveled and feasted and made merry in splendor every day.
(AMP)
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
(KJV)
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How blessed and amazing are God's gifts, dear friends Life with immortality, splendor with righteousness, truth with confidence, faith with assurance, self-control with holiness And all these things are within our comprehension.
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Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not fine yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine
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If the radiance of a thousand sunsWere to burst at once into the skyThat would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds.
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Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man's dream --and yet God blesses it!
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Take that Poppy seed, for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardlyvisible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.
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Truth lies within ourselves: it takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness and to Know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape than in effecting entry for light supposed to be without.
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'In a world older and more complete than ours, animals move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.'
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We are the party of all labor. The whole earth shall be ours to share. And every race and craft our neighbor. No idle class shall linger there like vultures on the wealth we render from field and factory, mill and mine. Tomorrow's sun will rise in splendor and light us till the end of time.
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Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
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It is only when all our Christian ancestors are allowed to become our contemporaries that the real splendor of the Christian faith and the Christian life begins to dawn upon us.
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There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
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I didn't beleive in God, until I saw God. It was everything, all of infinity. Hate, love, horror and splendor. It is the infinite structure, or pattern of interconnected conscious experiences that is YOUR mind, that creates, contains, appreciates, understands, realizes and experiences all things. You just forgot God on purpose in order to appreciate what it is like to be you, and be challenged. God is the facilitator of this dream. (or nightmare) And I still don't believe in God, or anything for that matter.
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If the radiance of a thousand suns Were to burst at once into the sky That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one -- I am become Death, The shatterer of Worlds.
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If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.
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