he toil to shame or burden him.
It will not last. The famine of a world too full will lay it waste; but
it is here a little while longer still.

* * *

For Discontent already creeps into each of these happy households, and
under her fox-skin hood says, "Let me in--I am Progress."

* * *

In most men and women, Love waking wakes, with itself, the soul.

In poets Love waking kills it.

* * *

When God gives genius, I think He makes the brain of some strange,
glorious stuff, that takes all strength out of the character, and all
sight out of the eyes. Those artists--they are like the birds we blind:
they sing, and make people weep for very joy to hear them; but they
cannot see their way to peck the worms, and are for ever wounding their
breasts against the wires. No doubt it is a great thing to have genius;
but it is a sort of sickness after all; and when love comes--

* * *

Lippo knew that wise men do not do harm to whatever they may hate.

They drive it on to slay itself.

So without blood-guiltiness they get their end, yet stainless go to God.

* * *

He was a little shell off the seashore that Hermes had taken out of
millions like it that the waves washed up, and had breathed into, and
had strung with fine chords, and had made into a syrinx sweet for every
human ear.

Why not break the simple shell for sport? She did not care for music.
Did the gods care--they could make another.

* * *

Start a lie and a truth together, like hare and hound; the lie will run
fast and smooth, and no man will ever turn it aside; but at the truth
most hands will fling a stone, and so hinder it for sport's sake, if
they can.

* * *

He heard the notes of a violin, quite faint and distant, but sweet as
the piping of a blackbird amongst the white anemones of earliest
spring.

* * *

"Nature makes some folks false as it makes lizards wriggle," said he.
"Lippo is a lizard. No dog ever caught him napping, though he looks so
lazy in the sun."

* * *

He did not waver. He did not repine. He made no reproach, even in his
own thoughts. He had only lost all the hope out of his life and all the
pride of it.

But men lose these and live on; women also.

He had built up his little kingdom out of atoms, little by little; atoms
of time, of patience, of