United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here are few statistical facts, but certainly it is curious to see how many national traits thus photographed by a contemporary, have quite vanished, and have been exchanged for their very opposites. Certainly the last physiological criticism of all would indicate as great a national metamorphosis, during the last three centuries, as is offered by many other of the writer's observations.
The greatest tyrants that ever dripped with blood have assumed the titles of "most gracious," "most clement," "most merciful," &c., and have ordered their crouching vassals to accost them thus. When did not vice lay claim to those virtues which are the opposites of its habitual crimes?
The virtues which must be practised, at least generally, by rude men, so that they may associate in a body, are those which are still recognised as the most important. But they are practised almost exclusively in relation to the men of the same tribe; and their opposites are not regarded as crimes in relation to the men of other tribes.
I see nowhere more often than in authors the truth that men love their opposites. Dickens insists on being tragic and makes shipwreck. Do not think me impertinent; I am only honestly anxious that what I consider a very remarkable genius should have faith in itself. Let your moral take care of itself, and remember that an author's writing-desk is something infinitely higher than a pulpit.
He praises wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air, snow and ice for their warmth, and so on. It may give a moment's pleasure when a writer takes two opposites and rubs their ears together in that way, but one may easily get too much of it. Words really mean nothing when used in such a manner.
"There must be more in her than I thought, or this clever man would not have chosen her," she said to herself; for Bessie, in her girlish innocence, knew little of the law of opposites, or how an intellectual or scientific man will sometimes select for his life companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless, adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues.
They seem to urge on us the idea that there is a pleroma, or human fullness, in which the opposites may be reconciled, and that the divine event to which we are moving is a State in which there will be essential freedom combined with an organic unity.
For ye wit well, that they that be toward the Antarctic, they be straight, feet against feet, of them that dwell under the Transmontane; also well as we and they that dwell under us be feet against feet. For all the parts of sea and of land have their opposites, habitable trepassable, and they of this half and beyond half.
How was the young lady to know that Bessie was wearing her oldest things from a sense of economy, and that her new jacket and best hat a very pretty one were in the neat black box in the luggage-van? Certainly the two girls were complete opposites.
Braile did not take the point up, but remained thoughtfully smiling in the direction his guest had taken. "The idea is that most people marry their opposites," he remarked, "and that gives the children the advantage of inheriting their folly from two kinds of fools.
Word Of The Day