Commonplace Book: October

"There are few persons in the world who care not for the appearance of their dress. They generally want their garments of a good material, and to fit them in a becoming manner. Our ideas and thoughts are also entitled to a becoming dress; and it should be our pride to clothe them with the most chaste and beautiful language, that they may hang around our person as jewels of unfading beauty, even as “apples of gold in pictures of silver" (Prov. 25:11)."
-Orson Hyde, JD 6:375


Blessed are the undefiled in the way, how walk in the law of the Lord.
Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart.
They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways.
Thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.
O that my ways were directed to keep thy statues!
Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.
I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.
I will keep thy statues: O forsake me not utterly.
-Psalm 119:1-8


But the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character; and character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of will.
-Charlotte Mason, 6:129


For, let us consider. What we do with the will we describe as voluntary. What we do without the conscious action of will is involuntary. The will has only one mode of action, its function is to 'choose', and with every choice we make we grow in force of character.
-Charlotte Mason, 6:129


"An unrushed atmosphere is absolutely essential if you are to have the Spirit of the Lord present in your class. Please don’t ever forget that. Too many of us rush. We rush right past the Spirit of the Lord trying to beat the clock in some absolutely unnecessary footrace."
-Jeffrey R. Holland, Teaching and Learning in the Church


The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
-Psalm 14:1


Fool. n.
1. One who is destitute of reason, or the common powers of understanding...
2. In common language, a person who is somewhat deficient in intellect... or a person who does not exercise his reasons...
3. In scripture, a fool is often used for a wicked or depraved person; one who acts contrary to sound wisdom in his moral deportment; one who follows his own inclinations, who prefers trifling and temporary pleasures to the service of God and eternal happiness.
4. A weak Christian; a godly person who has much remaining sin and unbelief...
-Webster's 1828, "Fool"


In order to successfully treat muscular and skeletal problems with plant medicine we need to have a clear understanding of the different tissues involved, how they work, and what can happen to them. We also need to understand  that certain parts are analogous to others, even when they have been artificially separated in biomedicine. Finally, we need to know which herbs do what.
-Treatment of the Muscular and Skeletal System by Matthew Wood, Registered Herbalist

“She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.”
-The Scarlett Letter


Evening
The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came,
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,
And so the night became.
-Emily Dickinson