Favorite Prose

Prayer by Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
O Devine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

from You Can't Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe

Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen.
The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in the bright air--these things will never change.

The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will be the same.

All things belonging to the earth will never change-- the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the earth in seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.

The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the wastes of time, under the hoof of beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.

Gettysburg Address--Nov. 19, 186
by President Abraham Lincoln

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion; that we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

from Areopagitica by John Milton

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preseve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and being sowed up and down may spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless a wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is a precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. "Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essense, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.

A Mother's Love by Washington Irving

A father may turn his back on a child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives, and wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and still repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.

Unmarked by G. A. Mantell

The sea is largest of all cemeteries, and its slumberers sleep without monuments. All other graveyards, in all other lands, show some symbol of distinction between the great and small, the rich and poor; but in that ocean cemetery the king and the clown, the prince and the peasant, are alike distinguished. The same waves roll over all, the same requiem by the ministrelsy of the ocean is sung to their honour. Over their remains the same storm beats, and the same sun shines; and there, unmarked, the weak and the powerful, the plumed and the unhonoured, will sleep on until awakened by the same trumpet, when the sea shall give up its dead.

From A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

from Art by Auguste Rodin

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and divines the spirit by which nature herself is animated. It is the intellect which sees clearly into the universe and recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.

Beauty is everywhere. A lovely landscape does not appeal only by the agreeable sensations that it inspires, but by the ideas that it awakens. The line and the colors do not move you in themselves, but by the profound meaning that is in them. In the silhouette of trees, in the line of a horison, the great landscape painters saw a meaning--grave or gay, brave or discouraged, peaceful or troubled--according to their characters.

The artest, in representing the universe as he imagines it, formulates his own dreams. In nature he celebrates his own soul. And so he enriches the soul of humanity. For in coloring the material world with his spirit he reveals to his delighted fellow-beings a thousand unsuspected shades of feeling. He discovers for them riches in themselves until then unknown. He gives them new reasons for loving life, new inner lights to guide them.

A Tribute to the Dog
by George Graham Vest

The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his worst enemy. His son or daughter that he reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificied in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands beside him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiecely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come on encounter with roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth as outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.

Rest In Thee
by Thomas a' Kempis

Grant me, O sweet and loving Jesus, that I may rest in Thee, above all other creatures, above all health and beauty, above all glory and honour, above all power and dignity, above all knowledge and subtlety, above all riches and arts, above all joy and gladness, above all fame and comfort, above all hope and promise, above all desert and desire, above all gifts and benefits that Thou canst give and impart unto us, above all the mirth and joy that the mind of man can receive and feel;

Finally, above angels and archangels, and above all the heavenly host, above all things visible and invisible, and above all that Thou art not, O my God.

Love by Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor...Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.