Quotes by Jones Very

“We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of the spirit which we seek.”

“The poets of the present day who would raise the epic song cry out, like Archimedes of old, give us a place to stand on and we will move the world. This is, as we conceive, the true difficulty.”

“The stream of life, - which, in other men, obstructed and at last stationary as the objects that surround it, seems scarcely to deserve the name,- in them rolls ever onward its rich and life-giving waters as if unconscious of the beautiful banks it has overflowed with fertility.”

“As long as man labors for a physical existence, though an act of necessity almost, he is yet natural; it is life, though that of this world, for which he instinctively works.”

“IT is pleasing to frequent the places from which the feet of those whom this world calls great have passed away, to see the same groves and streams that they saw, to hear the same sabbath bells, to linger beneath the roof under which they lived, and be shaded by the same tree which shaded them.”

“The simplest conception of the origin and plan of the Iliad must, we think, prove the most correct. It originated, doubtless, in that desire, which every great poet must especially feel, of revealing to his age forms of nobler beauty and heroism than dwell in the minds of those around him.”

“From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.”

“Do we wonder then, that, as this momentary petrifaction of the heart goes on, we are every day more and more strangers in this world of love, holding no communion with the Universal Parent, and hoarding up instead of distributing His general gifts?”

“Often and often must he have thought, that, to be or not to be forever, was a question, which must be settled; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation upon which we feel that there can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul.”

“These are matters of external history. They are indeed prominent objects, often changing and giving a new direction to the current; but they tell us not why it flows onward and will ever flow.”