“A man’s best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet.”

The Men of Old.

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Do you have more details about the quote "A man’s best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet." by Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton?
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton photo
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton 12
British politician and poet 1809–1885

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I will go farther. The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding — the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

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People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

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