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A spiritual religion, supplanting the material and external paganism, makes its way to the heart of the ancient society, kills it, and deposits, in that corpse of a decrepit civilization, the germ of modern civilization.
a fundamental truth, it teaches man that he has two lives to live, one ephemeral, the other immortal; one on earth, the other in heaven.
that there is in him an animal and an intellect, a body and a soul; in a word, that he is the point of intersection, the common link of the two chains of beings which embrace all creation—of the chain of material beings and the chain of incorporeal beings; the first starting from the rock to arrive at man, the second starting from man to end at God.
None but divine wisdom was capable of substituting an even and all-embracing light for all those flickering rays of human wisdom. Pythagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, are torches: Christ is the glorious light of day.
God grants wisdom
Thus paganism, which moulded all creations from the same clay, minimizes divinity and magnifies man.
new form of the art is developed. This type is the grotesque; its new form is comedy.
in our opinion, separates modern from ancient art, the present form from the defunct form; or, to use less definite but more popular terms, romantic literature from classical literature.
uniform simplicity of the genius of the ancients;
Ancient poetry, compelled to provide the lame Vulcan with companions, tried to disguise their deformity by distributing it, so to speak, upon gigantic proportions. Modern genius retains this myth of the supernatural smiths, but gives it an entirely different character and one which makes it even more striking; it changes the giants to dwarfs and makes gnomes of the Cyclops.
The universal beauty which the ancients solemnly laid upon everything, is not without monotony; the same impression repeated again and again may prove fatiguing at last.
Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
On the other hand, the grotesque seems to be a halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful ...
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Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.
And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The Creation would not be longer a Riddle to us: The Heavens, Earth, and Waters, with their respective, various and numerous Inhabitants: Their Productions, Natures, Seasons, Sympathies and Antipathies; their Use, Benefit and Pleasure, would be better understood by us: And an eternal Wisdom, Power, Majesty, and Goodness, very conspicuous to us, thro’ those sensible and passing Forms: The World wearing the Mark of its Maker, whose Stamp is everywhere visible, and the Characters very legible to the Children of Wisdom.
If we focused on large building/engineering projects like in seveneves rather than communication.
And yet we are very apt to be full of our selves, instead of Him that made what we so much value; and, but for whom we can have no Reason to value our selves.
It is too frequent to begin with God and end with the World. But He is the good Man’s Beginning and End; his Alpha and Omega.
We must needs disorder our selves, if we only look at our Losses. But if we consider how little we deserve what is left, our Passion will cool, and our Murmurs will turn into Thankfulness.
Nor can we fall below the Arms of God, how low soever it be we fall.
then is the virtue of a judge seen, to make inequality equal;
[A judge must have regard to the time as well as to the matter].
to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person.
[We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully].
Note how the things thou dost adventure to gain are of small moment; but that which thou shalt lose so great, that I must leave it in his point, having no words sufficiently able to endear it.
When something creates ruin, there is no amount to gain that is worth the risk of ruin.
