Chapter III: Part 3
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give no peace.--EMERSON.
Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.--BOVEE.
There is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent and sincere earnestness.--DICKENS.
He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.--JOHN FOSTER.
ECONOMY.--Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.--H.W. SHAW.
Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.--SPURGEON.
Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy hide-bound pocket soon begin to thrive and will never again cry with the empty belly-ache; neither will creditors insult thee, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor nakedness freeze thee.--FRANKLIN.
He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.--FELTHAM.
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health. --DR. JOHNSON.
Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. --FRANKLIN.
If you know how to spend less than you get you have the philosopher's stone.--FRANKLIN.
Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.--JOUBERT.
A penny saved is two pence clear,
A pin a day's a groat a year.
--FRANKLIN.
Those individuals who save money are better workmen; if they do not the work better, they behave better and are more respectable; and I would sooner have in my trade a hundred men who save money than two hundred who would spend every shilling they get. In proportion as individuals save a little money their morals are much better; they husband that little, and there is a superior tone given to their morals, and they behave better for knowing that they have a little stake in society.
No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.--HALIBURTON.
EDUCATION.--The true order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice.--MRS. SIGOURNEY.
A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, if he understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions,--whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just and benevolent. --LADY HERVEY.
The world is only saved by the breath of the school children.--THE TALMUD.
It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses.--BEECHER.
A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices of peace and war.--MILTON.
Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined, the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.--WEBSTER.
It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanics' institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.
Unless your cask is perfectly clean, whatever you pour into it turns sour.--HORACE.
Prussia is great because her people are intelligent. They know the alphabet. The alphabet is conquering the world.--G.W. CURTIS.
Next in importance to freedom and justice, is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.
A boy is better unborn than untaught.--GASCOIGNE.
On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.--WEBSTER.
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character. Let parents bear this ever in mind.--HOSEA BALLOU.
Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.--CHAPIN.
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think,--rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.--BEATTIE.
Into what boundless life does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being--positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy.--CHAPIN.
All that a university or final highest school can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books.--CARLYLE.
If you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them--you first make thieves and then punish them.--SIR THOMAS MORE.
'Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
--POPE.
EGOTISM.--When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed, his praises never.--MONTAIGNE.
Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your word.--CHESTERFIELD.
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not to talk of ourselves at all.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
It is never permissible to say, I say.--MADAME NECKER.
The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie. --ZIMMERMANN.
What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.--HARE.
The more anyone speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.--LAVATER.
Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.--PASCAL.
He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks that others cannot do without him is still more mistaken.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
ELOQUENCE.--Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a manuscript; every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.--COLTON.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.--WEBSTER.
There is as much eloquence in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker, as in his choice of words.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
EMPLOYMENT.--Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.--BLAIR.
The rust rots the steel which use preserves.--LYTTON.
Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.--SENECA.
The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed. --JEREMY TAYLOR.
Employment, which Galen calls "nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness, that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery.--BURTON.
ENTHUSIASM.--Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.--EMERSON.
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. --BEACONSFIELD.
Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment.--TUCKERMAN.
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.--LYTTON.
Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.--EMERSON.
The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as a leader. --ARTHUR HELPS.
Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.
ENVY.--There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.--SHERIDAN.
An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.--SOCRATES.
As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man.--ST. CHRYSOSTOM.
We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.--PLINY.
Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
--THOMSON.
The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow-creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!--STEELE.
The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.--COLTON.
Envy--the rottenness of the bones.--PROVERBS 14:30.
There is no guard to be kept against envy, because no man knows where it dwells, and generous and innocent men are seldom jealous and suspicious till they feel the wound.
Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees.--SAADI.
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by a defeat.--COLTON.
Envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame, that nobody ever had the confidence to own it.--ROCHESTER.
ETERNITY.--He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.--COLTON.
Let us be adventurers for another world. It is at least a fair and noble chance; and there is nothing in this worth our thoughts or our passions. If we should be disappointed, we are still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we are eternally happy.--BURNET.
Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of eternity.--BISHOP HEBER.
The vaulted void of purple sky
That everywhere extends,
That stretches from the dazzled eye,
In space that never ends;
A morning whose uprisen sun
No setting e'er shall see;
A day that comes without a noon,
Such is eternity.
--CLARE.
"What is eternity?" was a question once asked at the Deaf and Dumb Institution at Paris, and the beautiful and striking answer was given by one of the pupils, "The lifetime of the Almighty."--JOHN BATE.
If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven. --TILLOTSON.
EVIL.--The doing an evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.--COLERIDGE.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.
--HOOD.
To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil with evil is evil.--MOHAMMED.
We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.--DESMAHIS.
Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.--EMERSON.
If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not. --FRANKLIN.
As sure as God is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.--SOUTHEY.
In the history of man it has been very generally the case that when evils have grown insufferable they have touched the point of cure. --CHAPIN.
Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope, and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of wisdom and love.--CHANNING.
EXAMPLE.--Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.--REV. R. CECIL.
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.--GOLDSMITH.
A wise and good man will turn examples of all sorts to his own advantage. The good he will make his patterns, and strive to equal or excel them. The bad he will by all means avoid.--THOMAS À KEMPIS.
None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.--FRANKLIN.
No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.--HOSEA BALLOU.
I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.--HERODOTUS.
Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.--H.W. SHAW.
If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.--QUARLES.
Example is contagious behavior.--CHARLES READE.
The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but he went about doing good. --HORACE MANN.
The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.--DR. JOHNSON.
EXCESS.--Excess always carries its own retribution.--OUIDA.
The misfortune is, that when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety.--KNOX.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
--SHAKESPEARE.
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.--COLTON.
The body oppressed by excesses, bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with. --HORACE.
Every morsel to a satisfied hunger is only a new labor to a tired digestion.--SOUTH.
Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal. --ST. EVREMOND.
EXERCISE.--A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick.--SIR W. TEMPLE.
It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.--CICERO.
There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.--BEECHER.
Exercise is the chief source of improvement in all our faculties. --BLAIR.
You will never live to my age without you keep yourself in breath with exercise.--SIR P. SIDNEY.
EXPERIENCE.--To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.--BAYARD TAYLOR.
Experience join'd with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.
--GREEN.
Experience does take dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.--CARLYLE.
No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience, would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted, he knew nothing; and that those ideas, which in theory appeared the most advantageous, were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. --TERENCE.
Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.--H.W. SHAW.
It may serve as a comfort to us in all our calamities and afflictions that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss.--L'ESTRANGE.
To wilful men,
The injuries that they themselves procure,
Must be their schoolmasters.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.--FRANKLIN.
All is but lip wisdom which wants experience.--SIR P. SIDNEY.
EXTRAVAGANCE.--He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.--DR. JOHNSON.
The man who builds, and wants wherewith to pay,
Provides a home from which to run away.
--YOUNG.
FAITH.--What we believe, we must believe wholly and without reserve; wherefore the only perfect and satisfying object of faith is God. A faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no farther, is none.
Faith is the key that unlocks the cabinet of God's treasures; the king's messenger from the celestial world, to bring all the supplies we need out of the fullness that there is in Christ.--J. STEPHENS.
Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next.--YOUNG.
It is impossible to be a hero in anything unless one is first a hero in faith.--JACOBI.
Faith is not the lazy notion that a man may with careless confidence throw his burden upon the Saviour and trouble himself no further, a pillow upon which he lulls his conscience to sleep, till he drops into perdition; but a living and vigorous principle, working by love, and inseparably connected with true repentance as its motive and with holy obedience as its fruits.
Faith is the root of all good works. A root that produces nothing is dead.--BISHOP WILSON.
The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.--ADDISON.
The highest historical probability can be adduced in support of the proposition that, if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual system of the moral world.--EDWARD EVERETT.
He had great faith in loaves of bread
For hungry people, young and old,
And hope inspired; kind words he said
To those he sheltered from the cold.
In words he did not put his trust;
His faith in words he never writ;
He loved to share his cup and crust
With all mankind who needed it.
He put his trust in Heaven and he
Worked well with hand and head;
And what he gave in charity
Sweetened his sleep and daily bread.
No cloud can overshadow a true Christian but his faith will discern a rainbow in it.--BISHOP HORNE.
Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.--LOWELL.
FAME.--None despise fame more heartily than those who have no possible claim to it.--J. PETIT-SENN.
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.--SIMMS.
Though fame is smoke, its fumes are frankincense to human thoughts. --BYRON.
He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause.--SHAKESPEARE.
Whatever may be the temporary applause of men, or the expressions of public opinion, it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that no true and permanent fame can be founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.--CHARLES SUMNER.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else,--very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now let us be a celebrated individual!"--HOLMES.
It is a very indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares so much about fame; about what the world says of us; to be always looking in the faces of others for approval; to be always anxious about the effect of what we do or say; to be always shouting, to hear the echoes of our own voices.--LONGFELLOW.
The way to fame is like the way to heaven--through much tribulation. --STERNE.
Nor fame I slight, nor for her favors call:
She comes unlook'd for, if she comes at all.
--POPE.
Write your name in kindness, love and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten.--CHALMERS.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
--BYRON.
FASHION.--Fashion's smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, except virtue.--COLTON.
A woman would be in despair if Nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear.--MLLE. DE L'ESPINASSE.
Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.--J.G. HOLLAND.
Fashion is among the last influences under which a human being who respects himself, or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed.--CHANNING.
The Empress of France had but to change the position of a ribbon to set all the ribbons in Christendom to rustling. A single word from her convulsed the whalebone market of the world.--J.G. HOLLAND.
A fashionable woman is always in love--with herself.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.--CHAMFORT.
Fashion, a word which knaves and fools may use
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
--CHURCHILL.
FEAR.--The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.--PSALM 111:10.
O, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,--
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
--LONGFELLOW.
Fear not the proud and the haughty; fear rather him who fears God. --SAADI.
Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.--GOLDSMITH.
The fear of God is freedom, joy, and peace;
And makes all ills that vex us here to cease.
--WALLER.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?--PSALM 27:1.
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil.--DR. JOHNSON.
God planted fear in the soul as truly as He planted hope or courage. Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.--BEECHER.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.--1 JOHN 4:18.
Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.--GEORGE SEWELL.
Fear not; for I am with thee.--ISAIAH 43:5.
FIDELITY.--To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.--VAUGHAN.
He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.--GEORGE MACDONALD.
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;
His tears, pure messengers sent from his heart;
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.--CICERO.
Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend, who will stand firm when others fail; the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous,--in such a one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages.--DEAN STANLEY.
FLATTERY.--Those are generally good at flattering who are good for nothing else.--SOUTH.
If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again, though he were my best friend.--FRANKLIN.
No flatt'ry, boy! an honest man can't live by't;
It is a little sneaking art, which knaves
Use to cajole and soften fools withal.
If thou hast flatt'ry in thy nature, out with't;
Or send it to a court, for there 'twill thrive.
--OTWAY.
A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.--RICHARDSON.
Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies.--TACITUS.
It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour the dead only, these the living.--ANTISTHENES.
Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.--SWIFT.
Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.--JEAN PAUL.
'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
--SWIFT.
Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise,
The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Who flatters is of all mankind the lowest,
Save he who courts the flattery.
--HANNAH MORE.
Meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips.--PROVERBS 20:19.
Men are like stone jugs,--you may lug them where you like by the ears. --DR. JOHNSON.
Commend a fool for his wit and a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms.--FIELDING.
FLOWERS.--Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.--BEECHER.
In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares:
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
On its leaves a mystic language bears.
--PERCIVAL.
How the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the tomb.--MRS. L.M. CHILD.
There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.--SOUTH.
Flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them.--H.N. HUDSON.
And with childlike credulous affection
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.
--LONGFELLOW.
FOOLS.--He who provides for this life, but takes no care for eternity, is wise for a moment, but a fool forever.--TILLOTSON.
The wise man has his follies no less than the fool; but it has been said that herein lies the difference,--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but are hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.--COLTON.
People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.--LADY MONTAGU.
To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.--POPE.
Surely he is not a fool that hath unwise thoughts, but he that utters them.--BISHOP HALL.
It would be easier to endow a fool with intellect than to persuade him that he had none.--BABINET.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
Resolves--and re-resolves; then dies the same.
--YOUNG.
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own.--CICERO.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.--POPE.
A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.--COLTON.
Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.--HELPS.
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.--CHAPMAN.
None but a fool is always right.--HARE.
People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them.--HALIBURTON.
FORBEARANCE.--Learn from Jesus to love and to forgive. Let the blood of Jesus, which implores pardon for you in heaven, obtain it from you for your brethren here upon earth.--VALPY.
The kindest and the happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something every day they live
To pity, and perhaps forgive.
--COWPER.
It is a noble and a great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top.--SOUTH.
FORGIVENESS.--If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.--MATTHEW 6:14.
He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.--LORD HERBERT.
They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.--BAILEY.
The brave only know how to forgive.--STERNE.
The gospel comes to the sinner at once with nothing short of complete forgiveness as the starting-point of all his efforts to be holy. It does not say, "Go and sin no more, and I will not condemn thee." It says at once, "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more."--HORATIUS BONAR.
Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.--LYTTON.
Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.--COWPER.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.--THE LORD'S PRAYER.
God's way of forgiving is thorough and hearty,--both to forgive and to forget; and if thine be not so, thou hast no portion of His.--LEIGHTON.
FORTITUDE.--The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is the calmest in storms, and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is the most unfaltering.--CHANNING.
Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.--JEREMY COLLIER.
True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man's self, and an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets or danger lies in his way.--LOCKE.
FORTUNE.--It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence.--DRYDEN.
The prudent man really frames his own fortunes for himself.--PLAUTUS.
Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.--POPE.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.--SHAKESPEARE.
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.--SALLUST.
The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; and the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.--SAADI.
Fortune favors the bold.--CICERO.
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.--MOLIÈRE.
FREEDOM.--I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.--SWIFT.
There are two freedoms,--the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.--CHARLES KINGSLEY.
The cause of freedom is the cause of God.--BOWLES.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
--RICHARD LOVELACE.
And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
--ROBERT TREAT PAINE.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.--MACAULAY.
To have freedom is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess.--RAHEL.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light.
--JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
Freedom is not caprice but room to enlarge.--C.A. BARTOL.
Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die freemen.--JOSIAH QUINCY.
Who then is free?--the wise, who well maintains
An empire o'er himself; whom neither chains,
Nor want, nor death, with slavish fear inspire;
Who boldly answers to his warm desire;
Who can ambition's vainest gifts despise;
Firm in himself, who on himself relies;
Polish'd and round, who runs his proper course,
And breaks misfortune with superior force.
--HORACE.
The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect, and virtues.--CHANNING.
He was the freeman whom the truth made free;
Who first of all, the bands of Satan broke;
Who broke the bands of sin, and for his soul,
In spite of fools consulted seriously.
--POLLOCK.
FRIENDSHIP.--Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.--CICERO.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
--COWPER.
He is a friend indeed who proves himself a friend in need.--PLAUTUS.
Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not.--PROVERBS 27:10.
To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.--VAUGHAN.
There is no man so friendless but that he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.--LYTTON.
A friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one. --ADDISON.
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it.--GEORGE WASHINGTON.
No friend's a friend till he shall prove a friend.--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
The qualities of your friends will be those of your enemies,--cold friends, cold enemies; half friends, half enemies; fervid enemies, warm friends.--LAVATER.
Purchase no friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give such will cease to love.--FULLER.
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.--HENRY HOME.
Real friendship is a slow grower, and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.--CHESTERFIELD.
There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters, than thy inferiors.--SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
'Tis thus that on the choice of friends
Our good or evil name depends.
--GAY.
We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none. --DR. JOHNSON.
An act, by which we make one friend and one enemy, is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude.--COLTON.
That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end. --QUARLES.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in continue firm and constant.--SOCRATES.
We cannot expect the deepest friendship unless we are willing to pay the price, a self-sacrificing love.--PELOUBET.
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. --BOVEE.
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.--FRANKLIN.
The greatest medicine is a true friend.--SIR W. TEMPLE.
True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.--THEOPHRASTUS.
Sudden friendships rarely live to ripeness.--MLLE. DE SCUDÉRI.
Who friendship with a knave hath made,
Is judg'd a partner in the trade.
--GAY.
Thou mayest be sure that he who will in private tell thee of thy faults is thy friend, for he adventures thy dislike and doth hazard thy hatred.--SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
He is happy that hath a true friend at his need; but he is more truly happy that hath no need of his friend.--WARWICK.
I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
--COWPER.
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.--DR. JOHNSON.
FRUGALITY.--Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.--BURKE.
Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty.--DR. JOHNSON.
The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality.--CICERO.
FUTURITY.--It is vain to be always looking toward the future and never acting toward it.--J.F. BOYES.
The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, the last duty done.--GEORGE MACDONALD.
Trust no future howe'er pleasant;
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act,--act in the living present,
Heart within and God o'erhead!
--LONGFELLOW.
The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable.--SENECA.
God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and, understanding of his adversity, he would be senseless.--ST. AUGUSTINE.
Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.--PROVERBS 27:1.
The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.--CHAPIN.
Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.--ADDISON.
How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill! it is only the thought of the future that makes them great.--RICHTER.
If there was no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.--RICHTER.
GAMBLING.--There is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card-table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard looks and pale complexions are the natural indications.--STEELE.
Games of chance are traps to catch school boy novices and gaping country squires, who begin with a guinea and end with a mortgage. --CUMBERLAND.
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.--WHATELY.
There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away.--CHATFIELD.
I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand; and all that follows in his fatal career from that time is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.--CUMBERLAND.
It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.--WASHINGTON.
GENEROSITY.--All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.--MRS. JAMESON.
He who gives what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.--HENRY TAYLOR.
Generosity is only benevolence in practice.--BISHOP KEN.
The secret pleasure of a generous act is the great mind's great bribe. --DRYDEN.
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.--SOUTH.
Some are unwisely liberal; and more delight to give presents than to pay debts.--SIR P. SIDNEY.
When you give, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.--HENRY TAYLOR.
The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.--LAVATER.
Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.--DUNCAN.
In giving, a man receives more than he gives; and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.--GEORGE MACDONALD.
Let us proportion our alms to our ability, lest we provoke God to proportion His blessings to our alms.--BEVERIDGE.
A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes brother to a beggar. There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else. --SPURGEON.
GENIUS.--Genius is an immense capacity for taking trouble.--CARLYLE.
Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last.--LAVATER.
There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has but one talent for a genius.--HELPS.
Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.--OUIDA.
Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.--BEECHER.
The first and last thing which is required of genius is the love of truth.--GOETHE.
Genius can never despise labor.--ABEL STEVENS.
And genius hath electric power,
Which earth can never tame;
Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower--
Its flash is still the same.
--LYDIA M. CHILD.
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.--DRYDEN.
Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.--LADY BLESSINGTON.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
--POPE.
I know no such thing as genius,--genius is nothing but labor and diligence.--HOGARTH.
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.--LONGFELLOW.
Genius, without religion, is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in darkness.--HANNAH MORE.
Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.--SIR J. REYNOLDS.
GENTLEMAN.--Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.--BEACONSFIELD.
To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor or the toilet. Good clothes are not good habits. A gentleman is just a gentle-man,--no more, no less; a diamond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough.--BISHOP DOANE.
What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his taste to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and noble?--THACKERAY.
The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just and amiable, perfects the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. And the study of such a taste or relish will, as we suppose, be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good, as agreeable and polite.--SHAFTESBURY.
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.--LOCKE.
You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. --COLERIDGE.
He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue.--VICTOR HUGO.
Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.--HAZLITT.
He is gentle that doth gentle deeds.
Gentleman is a term which does not apply to any station, but to the mind and the feelings in every station.--TALFOURD.
Of the offspring of the gentilman Jafeth, came Habraham, Moyses, Aron and the profettys; and also the kyng of the right line of Mary, of whom that gentilman Jhesus was borne.--JULIANA BERNERS.
GENTLENESS.--True gentleness is founded on a sense of what we owe to Him who made us, and to the common nature which we all share. It arises from reflection on our own failings and wants, and from just views of the condition and the duty of man. It is native feeling heightened and improved by principle.--BLAIR.
We do not believe, or we forget, that "the Holy Ghost came down, not in shape of a vulture, but in the form of a dove."--EMERSON.
Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.--BALZAC.
The best and simplest cosmetic for women is constant gentleness and sympathy for the noblest interests of her fellow-creatures. This preserves and gives to her features an indelibly gay, fresh, and agreeable expression. If women would but realize that harshness makes them ugly, it would prove the best means of conversion.--AUERBACH.
Gentleness, which belongs to virtue, is to be carefully distinguished from the mean spirit of cowards and the fawning assent of sycophants. --BLAIR.
GIFTS.--Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness, when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing.--COLTON.
Give freely to him that deserveth well, and asketh nothing: and that is a way of giving to thyself.--FULLER.
The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.--EMERSON.
The only gift is a portion of thyself. * * * Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.--EMERSON.
A gift--its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you--may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.--LAVATER.
God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.--LUTHER.
There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.--SENECA.
GLORY.--Real glory springs from the quiet conquest of ourselves; and without that the conqueror is nought but the first slave.--THOMSON.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.--GOETHE.
The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.--COLTON.
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.--PLINY.
Glory relaxes often and debilitates the mind; censure stimulates and contracts,--both to an extreme. Simple fame is, perhaps, the proper medium.--SHENSTONE.
GLUTTONY.--Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities, and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.--BURTON.
I have come to the conclusion that mankind consume twice too much food.--SYDNEY SMITH.
Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.
--SHAKESPEARE.
The pleasures of the palate deal with us like Egyptian thieves who strangle those whom they embrace.--SENECA.
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.--ADDISON.
GOD.--In all thy actions think God sees thee; and in all His actions labor to see Him; that will make thee fear Him; this will move thee to love Him; the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, and the knowledge of God is the perfection of love.--QUARLES.
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.--MASSILLON.
God governs the world, and we have only to do our duty wisely, and leave the issue to Him.--JOHN JAY.
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is like the beasts in his body; and if he is not like God in his spirit, he is an ignoble creature.--BACON.
God is all love; it is He who made everything, and He loves everything that He has made.--HENRY BROOKE.
How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world,--of Him who has created, and who provides for the joys even of insects, as carefully as if He were their father.--RICHTER.
I fear God, and next to God, I chiefly fear him who fears Him not. --SAADI.
A foe to God was never true friend to man.--YOUNG.
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
--COWPER.
There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being.--SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Who guides below, and rules above,
The great disposer, and the mighty king;
Than He none greater, next Him none,
That can be, is, or was.
--HORACE.
Thou art, O God, the life and light
Of all this wondrous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night,
Are but reflections caught from Thee!
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine!
--MOORE.
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Many Thoughts of Many MindsChapter III: Part 3
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