Epigrams And Aphorisms

( Originally Published 1922 )

THE wise gods, when they contrived this tragic comedy of life which we have been such a weary time a-playing, mixed up a little humor with the serious business. He alone plays his part well who finds the jest—the lath for the sword, the mask of Harlequin for the frozen face of Medusa. Those who have best solved the exquisite humor of the gods are called great by the general voice of mankind, and some dozen of them have lived since the world, or the play, began. Unlike these supremely gifted players, the vast majority of men get only the merest inkling of the gods' merry intent, but it suffices to save their lives from utter misery. Some devote themselves to solving the riddle with terrible seriousness, and the laughing god underneath always escapes them, leaving them empty-handed and ever the more tragically serious. These—and they are no small number—die in madhouses or religion, or write books which increase the sorrow of the world: whatever their fate, life remains for them a tragedy to the end.

THERE came a Soul before the Judgment seat. And God said: Need there is none that We judge this man, for he hath given all his days to Evil; from his childhood he hath turned his back upon the City of Peace and none hath ever cleaved more to the sweetness of sin. Let him pronounce his own judgment and avow that he hath deserved the Evil Place.

Then the Soul cried out: It is true I have merited Hell by my iniquity, but this is not Thy justice.

And God said: What more canst thou ask, seeing that thou hast wrought judgment against thyself?

Then the Soul made answer : Send me to Heaven for the good I would have done !

LIFE is never simple to the divining spirit every moment of the common day is charged with mystery and revelation.

ALL the great humorists are sad,—Cervantes, Molière, Swift, Sterne, Heine, Richter, Balzac, Dickens,—for sadness is the penalty which Nature has annexed to that deep-searching knowledge of life we call humor. Hence is the tragedy of literature: if the man did not weep sometimes, we would cease to laugh at his jests;—in the end he weeps too much, and then we talk of the failure of his art!

I KNOW not why I sit under this lamp and write these lines—doubtless it has all been writ-ten before times out of mind. Could it be possible that I should have a single thought that never was vouchsafed to another? Or a single expression that has not at some time been turned by another pen? No, and again, No. What then is to do? Why nothing—but to write, and to keep on writing!

IT seems to be a fixed belief and an incurable superstition of the mediocre mind that great mental power is always accompanied by some moral handicap or abnormality. Hence the obscene legends spawned of the vulgar imagination, which are attached to so many famous and illustrious names. It is the toad's answer to the swan—the eternal penalty which mediocrity exacts of genius.

Few of a truth are the great artists and poets who have escaped this penalty; nay, we are loth to grant them the highest merit should they lack the stigma of slander. Glory and Golgotha refuse to be separated!

POSTERITY is the hectic dream of the weak —it does not break the calm slumber of the strong. The man who works with his whole soul in the present, who possesses and is possessed by the time that has been allotted him out of all eternity,—that man may miss the prize as well as another. But he is headed the right way to capture the award of posterity.

SHAKESPEARE erred in assigning only seven ages to man—there are at least seventy. Often we live through several in a single day—it all depends upon the kind of experience.

WHY do we write for the world the things we would not say to the individual? Why do we send on every wandering wind the secrets we would not whisper in the ear of our chosen friend?

REMEMBER that the true struggle of life is not to achieve what the world calls success, but to hold that Essential Self inviolate which was given you to mark your identity from all other souls. Against this precious possession—this Veriest You—all winds blow, all storms rage, all malign powers contend. As you hold to this or suffer it to be marred or taken from you, so shall be your victory or defeat.

O MEMORY ! thou leadest me back over the years and showest me many a place where once I would have lingered forever, but now thou canst not show me one of all where I would tarry again; my Soul knoweth that not a single step can be retraced, and that she is of the Infinite to be.

THE mystery of the Hereafter is very great indeed, but we may take courage in reflecting that with each day we leave some of it behind us.

MEN are always talking about truth, but there is really so little of it in common use that it might be classed with radium. Perhaps we should not know it if we saw it, for our experience deals almost wholly with substitutes.

IN making up the character of God, the old theologians failed to mention that He is of an infinite cheerfulness. The omission has cost the world much tribulation.

TO preserve the freedom of your mind and the whiteness of your soul—that is to lead the life ideal.

BEGINNING as children, we walk away from God, and as old men we strive to totter back again.

GRIEVE not that you desire always and vainly-life without desire is very near unto death.

NATURE has no sorrows—perhaps that is why she is immortal.

NOT a single religion in the world credits God with a sense of humor. Perhaps this only proves how great a humorist he is !

AMONG persons whose lives touch at every point, there is often no communion of the soul for months and years. Were we to live only by the active life of the soul, our term would be as brief as that of the ephemera.

MEN are damned not for what they believe but for what they make-believe.

I AM not the man I was ten years ago. I should not know the boy I was were I to meet him in the street. Time is ever stealing our outworn wardrobes of the flesh and spirit.

THE strongest writer smiles at the praise of his strength—he alone knows how weak he can be.

THE very meanest man I know believes for sure that God is made in his particular image and likeness.