
JULY SIXTEENTH
Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant? Pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet and from it learn all.
—Margaret Fuller.
The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yet, here is this miserable, despicable Actual, wherein thou standest—here or nowhere is thy Ideal! Work it out therefrom!
—Thomas Carlyle.