The True Way To Mourn The Dead

As The Rose-tree Is Composed Of The Sweetest Flowers And The Sharpest Thorns, As The Heavens Are Sometimes Overcast—alternately Tempestuous And Serene—so Is The Life Of Man Intermingled With Hopes And Fears, With Joys And Sorrows, With Pleasure And Pain.

We Are In A War Of A Peculiar Nature. It Is Not With An Ordinary Community, Which Is Hostile Or Friendly As Passion Or As Interest May Veer About: Not With A State Which Makes War Through Wantonness, And Abandons It Through Lassitude. We Are At War With A System, Which By Its Essence, Is Inimical To All Other Governments, And Which Makes Peace Or War, As Peace And War May Best Contribute To Their Subversion. It Is With An Armed Doctrine That We Are At War. It Has, By Its Essence, A Faction Of Opinion, And Of Interest, And Of Enthusiasm, In Every Country.

All Writers On The Science Of Policy Are Agreed, And They Agree With Experience, That All Governments Must Frequently Infringe The Rules Of Justice To Support Themselves; That Truth Must Give Way To Dissimulation, Honesty To Convenience, And Humanity Itself To The Reigning Of Interest. The Whole Of This Mystery Of Iniquity Is Called The Reason Of State.

Poetry, With All Its Obscurity, Has A More General As Well As A More Powerful Dominion Over The Passions Than The Art Of Painting.

To Read Without Reflecting Is Like Eating Without Digesting.