He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.
Grief alone can teach us what is man.
Alone!-that worn-out word, So idly spoken, and so coldly heard; Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.
