Passage 1. knowledge and Virtue
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another;
good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility,
nor is largeness and justness of view faith.
Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound,
gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles.
Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman.
It is well to be a gentleman,
it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind,
a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life
—these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge;
they are the objects of a University.
I am advocating, I shall illustrate and insist upon them;
but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness,
and they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate,
to the heartless, pleasant, alas, and attractive as he shows when decked out in them.
Taken by themselves, they do but seem to be what they are not;
they look like virtue at a distance, but they are detected by close observers, and in the long run;
and hence it is that they are popularly accused of pretense and hypocrisy, not, I repeat, from their own fault,
but because their professors and their admirers persist in taking them for what they are not,
and are officious in arrogating for them a praise to which they have no claim.
Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk,
then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge
and human reason to contend against those giants,the passion and the pride of man.
Passage 2. “Packing” a Person
A person, like a commodity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration, however, does no harm when it shows the person's unique qualities to their advantage. To display personal charm in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A master packager knows how to integrate art and nature without any traces of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is no commodity but a human being, lively and lovely.
A young person, especially a female, radiant with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted by God. Any attempt to make up would be self-defeating. Youth, however, comes and goes in a moment of doze. Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to conceal the furrows ploughed by time. If you still enjoy life's exuberance enough to retain self-confidence and pursue pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your charm and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life which now arrives at a complacent stage of serenity indifferent to fame or wealth. There is no need to resort to hair-dyeing； the snow-capped mountain is itself a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old synchronizing with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the elder's company is like reading a thick book of deluxe edition that fascinates one so much as to be reluctant to part with. As long as one finds where
one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity establishes its brand by the right packaging. Passage 3. Three Passions I Have Lived for
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge,
and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish,
reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy
—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life
for a few hours for this joy.
I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness
—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness
looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen,
in a mystic miniature,
the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of men.
I have wished to know why the stars shine ...
A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens.
But always pity brought me back to earth.
Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.
Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people —a hated burden to their sons,
and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life.
I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. Passage 4. A Little Girl
Sitting on a grassy grave, beneath one of the windows of the church, was a little girl.
With her head bent back she was gazing up at the sky and singing, while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny cloud
that hovered like a golden feather above her head.
The sun, which had suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair,
gave it a metallic luster, and it was difficult to say what was the color, dark bronze or black.
So completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation seemed addressed,
that she did not observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up in the blue,
a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was singing, as if in rivalry.
As I slowly approached the child,
I could see by her forehead, which in the sunshine seemed like a globe of pearl,
and especially by her complexion, that she uncommonly lovely.
Her eyes, which at one moment seemed blue-gray, at another violet, were shaded by long black lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way,
and these matched in hue her eyebrows,
and the tresses that were tossed about her tender throat were quivering in the sunlight.
All this I did not take in at once;
for at first I could see nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up into my face.
Gradually the other features, especially the sensitive full-lipped mouth,
grew upon me as I stood silently gazing.
Here seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my loveliest dreams of beauty.
Yet it was not her beauty so much as the look she gave me that fascinated me, melted me. passage 5 Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience has shown,
that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;
and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,
all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.