Plant Lilies, And Lilies Will Bloom
Plant lilies, and lilies will bloom;
Plant roses, and roses will grow;
Plant hate, and hate to life will spring;
Plant love, and love to you will bring
The fruit of the seed you sow.
—Anon.
Nations Docile Only In Youth
Most nations, like most men, are docile only in youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. When customs are once established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and useless enterprise to try to reform them: the people will not permit their misfortunes to be touched upon, even for their instruction,—like the stupid and cowardly sick who shudder at sight of a physician.
Let free nations remember this: “Liberty may be acquired, but never recovered.”
—Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Xerxes Wept For His Army
Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of thirteen hundred thousand men, because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes: and yet, as Seneca well observes of him, he was the man that should bring them to their graves; and he consumed all that army in two years, for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred.
—Jeremy Taylor.
Reason Versus Force
“We hope to increase and promote the practice already begun, of submitting national differences to amicable discussion and arbitration; and, finally, of settling all national controversies by an appeal to reason, as becomes rational creatures, and not by physical force, as is worthy only of brute beasts; and that this shall be done by a congress of Christian nations, whose decrees shall be enforced by public opinion that rules the world.”
—At the forming of the American Peace Society in New York, May 8,1828
-William Ladd.
Alternate Reading: Matthew 20: 20-28.