Through water the musical sound is not transmitted, only the harsh
material noise. In air the noise is heard very near, the musical
sounds only are transmitted. Be thankful, poets and prophets, when you
live in an element such that your uncomely features are known only to
your own village.
"Do not sing its fundamental note too loud near a delicate glass, or
it will break," whispered my friend to me, as he saw me gazing at this
lovely being.
Seek the golden mean of life. Like the temperate regions, it has but
few thorny plants.
Be doubly careful of those to whom nature has been a niggard. The oak
and the palm take their own forms under all circumstances; the fungi
seem to owe theirs to outward influences.
It is a poor plant that crisps quickly into wood. It is a meagre
character which runs perpetually into prejudices.
As light suffers from no change of medium when it falls
perpendicularly, so the consequences of a perfectly upright action, or
cause of action, are strictly fortunate. But let it be ever so little
oblique, the new medium will exaggerate its obliquity; and the farther
it departs from uprightness, the more frightfully it is distorted.
Hoops and coins, which cannot preserve their equilibrium when in rest,
keep it when set in motion.
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