WeRead
Powered by ReaderPub
A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.
Time.
Time is but a name; it is what is done in time that is the substance: what are twenty-four centuries to the hard rock, more than twenty-four hours to man, or twenty-four minutes to the ephemera? Are there not periods in our own existence in which space, computed by its true measure of thoughts, feelings, and events, mocks the penury of man’s artificial scale, and comprises a lifetime in a day.