Voluntary Obedience... |
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And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels, is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure. The laws are his consolers: the good laws themselves are alive, they know if he have kept them, they animate him with the leading of great duty, and an endless horizon. – Ralph Waldo Emerson |