Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again
George MacdonaldRead
In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.
Interpretation
Human endeavors without divine guidance often lead to failure or dissatisfaction.
This quote by George Macdonald suggests that any actions taken by a person without considering a higher power or divine influence are likely to result in either complete failure or a form of success that is ultimately unfulfilling. It emphasizes the importance of spiritual or moral guidance in achieving true success and fulfillment in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of faith in professional pursuits.
Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.
When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
But words are vain; reject them allβ They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.
Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.
I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
You can't shake hands with a closed fist.
The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.
Pollution is everywhere, in that ancient Greek sense of miasma: guilt experienced as abject body fluid, moral pollution defining what kinds of beings count in social space.
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