The ear with hearing not at rest;
Desire with having is not stilled,
With human praise no heart is blest.

Vanity, then, of vanities,
All things for which men grasp and grope!
The precious things in heavenly eyes
Are love, and truth, and trust, and hope.

A gem which falls within the mire will still a gem remain;
Men's eyes turn downward to the earth and search for it with pain.
But _dust_, though whirled aloft to heaven, continues dust alway,
More base and noxious in the air than when on earth it lay.

--Saadi, tr. by James Freeman Clarke.

It was not anything she said;
It was not anything she did;
It was the movement of her head,
The lifting of her lid.
And as she trod her path aright
Power from her very garments stole;
For such is the mysterious might
God grants a noble soul.

True worth is in being, not seeming;
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good, not in dreaming,
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

--Alice Cary.

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many, honored by the Few;
To count as naught in world of church or state
But inwardly in secret to be great.

--James Russell Lowell.

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees it, for the God of Things as they are.

--Rudyard Kipling.

In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained; knowest thou when Fate
Thy measure takes? or when she'll say to thee,
"I find thee worthy; do this deed for me"?

--James Russell Lowell.

'Tis a lifelong toil till our lump be leaven.
The better! What's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven.
Work done least rapidly Art most cherishes.

--Robert Browning.

Let come what will, I mean to bear it out,
And either live with glorious victory
Or die with fame, renowned in chivalry.
He is not