You cannot make yourselves what you would like to be
as quickly as you would wish. If you are like a man that I know, you
will find the improvement of your own habits, and tempers, and manners,
a task for life. And if the change for the better is so slow in
yourselves, whom you have in your hands continually, and with whom you
can take what liberties you please, what can you expect it to be in
others? It is the law of God that things shall pass from bad to good,
and from better to best, by slow and almost imperceptible gradations.
All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are silent and slow.
Nothing starts suddenly into being; nothing arrives instantly at
perfection; nothing falls instantly into decay. The germination of the
seed, the growth of the plant, the swelling of the bud, the opening of
the flower, the ripening of the fruit, are all the results of slow and
silent operations. Still slower is the growth of the majestic forest.
And the trees of greatest worth, which supply us with our choicest and
most durable timber, have the slowest growth of all. And so it is with
things that live and move. Their growth is silent as the grave. And man,
the highest of created beings, advances to maturity most tardily of all.
Our development is so gradual, that the changes we undergo from day to
day are imperceptible.
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