Echoes

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.

You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one — well, at least one and a half, I'm sure.

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being.

I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.

Begin the morning by saying to thyself: I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I, who have seen the nature of the good, that it is beautiful, and of the bad, that it is ugly, can neither be injured by any of them, nor be angry with my kinsman.

The sun is new each day.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: / And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught / The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.

The mind must be given relaxation — it will rise improved and sharper after a good rest. Just as we must not force fertile farmland, for uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigor.

Go forth in virtue!

This nation has a banner… it is the banner of Dawn. It means Liberty… Every color means liberty; every thread means liberty.

... I came fortunately upon Darwin’s and Spencer’s works “The Data of Ethics,” “First Principles,” “Social Statics,” “The Descent of Man.” Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. "All is well since all grows better” became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.

Now the time is most precious. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

While I breathe, I hope.

For those who are awake, there is one common world; but of those who sleep, each turns aside into a private world of his own.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.