Fragments of Time

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 15, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 45.

Fragments of Time

PHILIP OF MACEDON was one day drinking deep with some of his courtiers, when he began to discourse about the odes and tragedies of Dionysius the elder, disputing the likelihood of his having found leisure to write them. The son of the deceased poet exclaimed, “They were written in the time which you and I and other happy fellows spent over the bowl.” If we could trace the history of the productions of the greatest men, the number of whose achievements amazes and astonishes us, we should find that the hours spent by their fellows in trifling and sin were the precious seasons which, husbanded by them with care, brought forth such grand results. Fragments of time should be gathered as carefully as fragments of gems from the lapidary’s floor, or dust of gold from amid the shavings of the gold-beater’s room.—Anon.