By thinking, we pass from the gossip of the neighborhood into the
conversation of the years. We do not know what Alcibiades said to his
man-servant about the care of his clothes, baths, perfumes,--nor what
his man-servant retailed to other retainers of the eccentricities and
vanities of his master. But we know what Pericles and Plato said to the
race. Here is the advantage of a thinking mind--that at any moment one
may enter into eternal subjects of thought, and have converse with those
who of all times have been the most profound.
Nothing teases the soul like the thought of the unfinished, the
imperfect, the incomplete. And yet, when we have thought and planned a
really great and abiding work, whether we ever finish it or not--for
many things in life may intervene between conception and completion--to
have thought of it is to have had in our lives a pleasure that can never
die. For one blessed hour or year we have been lifted to the thoughts of
God and have entered into the great original Design. Hence it is that
the life of the real Thinker, however broken or disturbed, is at heart a
life of serenity and joy.
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