* * * * *

    I stay my haste, I make delays,
        For what avails this eager pace? 
    I stand amid eternal ways,
        And what is mine shall know my face

    Asleep, awake, by night or day,
        The friends I seek are seeking me;
    No wind can drive my bark astray,
        Nor change the tide of destiny—­

    The waters know their own, and draw
        The brooks that spring in yonder height;
    So flows the good with equal law
        Unto the soul of pure delight.

    The stars come nightly to the sky;
        The tidal wave unto the sea;
    Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
        Can keep my own away from me.

    John Burroughs

* * * * *

The thing that pays, and that makes for a well balanced, useful, and happy life, is not necessarily and is not generally a somber, pious morality, or any standard of life that keeps us from a free, happy, spontaneous use and enjoyment of all normal and healthy faculties, functions, and powers, the enjoyment of all innocent pleasures—­use, but not abuse, enjoyment, but enjoyment through self-mastery and not through license or perverted use, for it can never come that way.  Look where we will, in or out and around us, we will find that it is the middle ground—­neither poverty nor excessive riches, good wholesome use without license, a turning into the bye-ways along the main road where innocent and healthy God-sent and God-intended pleasures and enjoyments are to be found; but never getting far enough away to lose sight of the road itself.  The middle ground it is that the wise man or woman plants foot upon.

* * * * *

    For evil poisons; malice shafts
      Like boomerangs return,
    Inflicting wounds that will not heal
      While rage and anger burn.

* * * * *

Tell me how much one loves and I will tell you how much he has seen of God.  Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how much he lives with God.  Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how far into the Kingdom of Heaven,—­the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, for “love is the fulfilling of the law.”

And in a sense love is everything.  It is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world.  Live only in the thought of love for all and you will draw love to you from all.  Live in the thought of malice or hatred, and malice and hatred will come back to you.

And so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred.  Love and good will stimulate and build up the body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it down.  Love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor of death unto death.

    “There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave,
      There are souls that are pure and true;
    Then give to the world the best you have,
      And the best will come back to you.