It is not so much what we get out of life as what we put into it that determines how large our returns of happiness shall be. The triumphant life is to be achieved through service. But it must be free and not compulsory. . . . There is a place where the path of duty suddenly becomes the path of beauty.
I dreamt and saw that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I served and found that duty was joy. See Life a Duty, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, (1816-1841) Topics: beauty, duty & Life I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.
The Navajo have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. The Navajo say, 'Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I'm on the pollen path.'
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Christmas hath a darkness;
Brighter than the blazing noon;
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low
My own lov'd light,
That very soft and solemn spirit worships,
That lovers love so well--strange joy is thine,
Whose influence o'er all tides of soul hath power,
Who lend'st thy light to rapture and despair;
The glow of hope and wan hue of sick fancy
Alike reflect thy rays: alike thou lightest
The path of meeting or of parting love--
Alike on mingling or on breaking hearts
Thou smil'st in throned beauty!
My favourite beauty look is definitely '70s beauty - sun kissed skin, wavy hair and defined eyes.
The modern Gamaliel should teach ethics. Ethics is the science of human duty. Arithmetic tells man how to count his money; ethics how he should acquire it, whether by honesty or fraud. Geography is a map of the world; ethics is a beautiful map of duty. This ethics is not Christianity, it is not even religion; but it is the sister of religion, because the path of duty is in full harmony, as to quality and direction, with the path of God.
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.
What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation - if not beauty?
What Heaven has conferred is called The Nature; an accordance with this nature is called The Path of duty; the regulation of this path is called Instruction. The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be left, it would not be the path.
Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams! Birth-less and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever. Death hath not touched it all, dead though the house of it seems!
He that hath a trade hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.
His voice was like honey and velvet. "Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty," he murmured, and I recognized the line spoken by Romeo in the tomb.