Items of Interest.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 450, 1 December 1904, Page 7

Items of Interest.

HE is no man who needs no mending.— Ealph Denning. Least, largest, there's one law for all the minds, Here or above; be true at any price ! —R. Browning. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.—Longfellow. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil, and cf good, That all the sages can. —Wordsworth. Injustice is only what the majority thinks of the minority. If you do not happen to be a man of genius, the first step toward success inllifee e is to join the majority.— F. Marion Crawford. « ' ~~' _ ••■ ' No man sees all the meaning of his deeds before he commits them; but, once committed, it seems as they had become part of the history of the universe, and the consequences are inexorable.—R. J. Campbell. Life is a queer game of blind man's bluff, isn't it? played in a mist on a mountain top, and the players keep dropping, over the precipices. But nobody heeds, because there are always plenty more, and the game goes on for ever,^ Accustom yourself to master things, which you seem to despair fof, for, if you observe, the left hand, though 'for want of practice, is insignificant in other business, yet 't holds the bridle better than the right because it has been used to it.—Marcus Aurelius. Suppressed sorrow is hardest to endure, and when grief once apt utterance 'tis already half consoled! So should the world's greatest singers tenderly proclaim the world's most speechless miseries, and who knows but vexed creation being thus relieved of pent-up woe may now take new heart of grace and comfort.—Marie Corelli. There ara two worlds; one where we live a short time, and which we leave never to return; the other, which we must soon enter, never to leave. Influence, power, friends, high fame, great wealth, are of use in the first world; the contempt of all these, things is for the latter. We must choose between these two.—Bruyere., Nought makes me trust in love so really, As the delight of the contented lowhess With which I gaze on souls I'd keep^loE'S ever *'"'■ In beauty. I'd be sad to equal them ; I'd feed their fame e'en from my heart's best blood Withering unseen, that they might flourish still. —Browning. The wish to possess a country-house, a retreat, a nest, a harbour of some kind, from the storms, and even from the agitating pleasures of life, is as old as the sorrows of joys of civilisation. The child feels it when he ' plays at house;' the school-boy when he is reading in his corner;' the lover when bethinks of/his mistress. Epicurus felt it in his garden; Horace and Virgil expressed their desire of it in passages which the sympathy of mankind has rendered immortal. It was the end of all the wisdom and experience of Shakespeare. He retired to his native town, and built himself a house, in which he died. —Leigh Hunt. We live in the midst of perpetual motion and' change, and see all things flowing around us without ceasing. Are they as a river proceeding from a source and running' towards a goal ? Are they as a sea swaying for ever to and fro ; or as a whirlpool circling round and round, without, beginning or end? Have they existed from eternity as they are now, or have they assumed their present form by chance aggregation, combination, and development; .or ,have they been built up out of eternal matter by an Eternal Mind arranging, uniting, constructing; or is matter itself.a work of mind ?.—Rev. W. Profeit.. . ■'. / ; Wisdom is alchemy. Else it could not be wisdom. This is its unfailing' characteristic, that' it finds good in everything,' that it renders all things more . precious, In this respect, also, does it renew the spirit of childhood withinus ; while foolishness hardens our hearts and narrows our' thoughts, it makes us feel a childlike curiosity and a childlike interest about all things. Hence nothing can be further from true wisdom than the mask of it assumed by men of the world, who affect a cold indifference about whatever does not belong to their own immediate circle of interests or pleasures.—J. C. Hare. Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important at the present moment is that of tbe self-forming power, treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world. It transcends in importance all our power over outward nature. There is more of divinity in it than in the force which pels the outward universe, and yet how little we comprehend it. How it slumbers in most men unsuspected, unused i This -makes self-culture possible, and bincls it on % a"s a solemn du'ty.—W. E, Qtt&bim'g,