To Examine The Causes Of Life, We

If Our Impulses Were Confined To Hunger, Thirst, And Desire, We Might Be Nearly Free; But Now We Are Moved By Every Wind That Blows And A Chance Word Or Scene That That Word May Convey To Us.

Our Feelings Probably Are Not Less Strong At Fifty Than They Were Ten Or Fifteen Years Before; But They Have Changed Their Objects, And Dwell On Far Different Prospects. At Five-and-thirty A Man Thinks Of What His Own Existence Is; When The Maturity Of Age Has Grown Into Its Autumn, He Is Wrapt Up In That Of Others. The Loss Of Wife Or Child Then Becomes More Deplorable, As Being Impossible To Repair; For No Fresh Connection Can Give Us Back The Companion Of Our Earlier Years, Nor A "new-sprung Race" Compensate For That, Whose Career We Hoped To See Run.

I Trembled, And My Heart Failed Within Me; When, On Looking Up, I Saw, By The Light Of The Moon, The Daemon At The Casement.

Nothing Contributes So Much To Tranquilize The Mind As A Steady Purpose - A Point On Which The Soul May Fix Its Intellectual Eye.

The Sentiment Of Immediate Loss In Some Sort Decayed, While That Of Utter, Irremediable Loneliness Grew On Me With Time.