C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Dependence
There is no one subsists by himself alone.
God has made no one absolute.
Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.
Depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.
Heaven’s eternal wisdom has decreed that man of man should ever stand in need.
The greatest man living may stand in need of the meanest, as much as the meanest does of him.
Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of others’ bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another’s stairs.
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
People may live as much retired from the world as they please; but sooner or later, before they are aware, they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
There is none made so great but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.
In an arch each single stone which, if severed from the rest, would be perhaps defenceless is sufficiently secured by the solidity and entireness of the whole fabric, of which it is a part.
The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces.
Dependence goes somewhat against the grain of a generous mind; and it is no wonder that it should do so, considering the unreasonable advantage which is often taken of the inequality of fortune.
We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.
The acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.
When we consider how weak we are in ourselves, yea, the very strongest of us, and how assaulted, we may justly wonder that we can continue one day in the state of grace; but when we look on the strength by which we are guarded, the power of God, then we see the reason of our stability to the end; for omnipotency supports us, and the everlasting arms are under us.
How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other, and bear each other’s burdens.
Life is a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself and make others happy must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egotism; let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him.