PREFACE. (continued 4)

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.—Johnson.

When God would educate a man He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation.—Celia Burleigh.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.—Joubert.

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.—Tennyson.

Neglect.—He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.—Johnson.

News.—Give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.—Shakespeare.

Newspapers.—In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.—Heinrich Heine.

Before this century shall run out journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth; it will spread from Pole to Pole, suddenly burning with the fervor of soul which made it burst forth; it will be the reign of the human mind in all its plenitude; it will not have time to ripen, to accumulate in the form of a book; the book will arrive too late; the only book possible from day to day is a newspaper.—Lamartine.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.—Napoleon.

They preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war with an authority which only the first Reformers and a long-past class of Popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the discipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition the new preachers somewhat resemble the mendicant Friars of old times; outwardly, full of holy zeal; inwardly, not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things.—Carlyle.

These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.—Johnson.

Night.—Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.—Mrs. Barbauld.

The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night.—Longfellow.

Sable-vested night, eldest of things.—Milton.

O mysterious night! Thou art not silent: many tongues hast thou.—Joanna Baillie.

Night, when deep sleep falleth on men.—Bible.

No.—No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at once.—Walter Scott.

Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.—Spurgeon.

The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No. She who explains wants to be convinced.—Alfred de Musset.

Nobility.—Virtue is the first title of nobility.—Molière.

Nonsense.—Nonsense is to sense as shade to light—it heightens effect.—Fred. Saunders.

Nothing.—There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account.—Fontaine.

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.—Richter.

Novels.—Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men,—Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians,—are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.—Thackeray.

We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.—Balzac.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.—Swift.

Novelty.—The enormous influence of novelty—the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment—is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you drink after it?" The two points of practical wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as as much possible, the sources of novelty.—Ruskin.

Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure.—South.

O.

Obedience.—To obey is better than sacrifice.—Bible.

How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice, it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience.—George Eliot.

Oblivion.—Oblivion is the flower that grows best on graves.—George Sand.

The grave of human misery.—Alfred de Musset.

Observation.—It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men,—the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.—Samuel Smiles.

Observation made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over fearful of a little dust.—Colton.

Each one sees what he carries in his heart.—Goethe.

Occupation.—The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.—Rousseau.

The busy have no time for tears.—Byron.

One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman.—Lacretelle.

Ocean.—Wave rolling after wave in torrent rapture.—Milton.

It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies.—Barry Cornwall.

The visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads.—Shakespeare.

Office.—The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors.—Walpole.

Opinion.—The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.—Heinrich Heine.

Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.—Socrates.

Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed?—George Eliot.

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.—Joubert.

It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.—Colton.

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.—Montaigne.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.—Voltaire.

If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.—Swift.

One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy.—Burton.

It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won.—Goethe.

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.—Mme. Roland.

Opportunity.—The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.—Vieland.

Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves.—Rochefoucauld.

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.—George Eliot.

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window.—Cardinal Imperiali.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.—George Eliot.

Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.—Jeremy Collier.

A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity."—Moore.

Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.—Lord Stanley.

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.—Charles Buxton.

Opposition.—The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat,—men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority—demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice—comes graceful and beloved as a bride!—Emerson.

Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Oratory.—Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.—Cicero.

Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a positive pleasure in catching resemblances for themselves.—Aristotle.

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.—Colton.

An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.—Theophrastus.

When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"—Colton.

Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.—Henry Clay.

It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client!—Goldsmith.

Originality.—Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.—Voltaire.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.—George Eliot.

The most original writers borrowed one from another. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto Boiardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.—Voltaire.

All originality is estrangement.—G. H. Lawes.

P.

Pain.—Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical, and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.—Heinrich Heine.

The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Pardon.—Pardon is the virtue of victory.—Mazzini.

The heart has always the pardoning power.—Madame Swetchine.

The offender never pardons.—George Herbert.

Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.—Bulwer-Lytton.

These evils I deserve, yet despair not of his final pardon whose ear is ever open, and his eye gracious to readmit the supplicant.—Milton.

Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within.—Dryden.

Parent.—The sacred books of the ancient Persians say: If you would be holy instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.—Montesquieu.

Partiality.—Partiality in a parent is commonly unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools, and the children that are least cockered make the best and wisest men.—L'Estrange.

As there is a partiality to opinions, which is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is also a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial to knowledge.—Locke.

Partiality is properly the understanding's judging according to the inclination of the will and affections, and not according to the exact truth of things, or the merits of the cause.—South.

Parting.—In every parting there is an image of death.—George Eliot.

Party.—He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man.—Lavater.

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes.—Colton.

Passions.—Passions makes us feel but never see clearly.—Montesquieu.

Passions are likened best to floods and streams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.—Sir Walter Raleigh.

The passions are the voice of the body.—Rousseau.

The advice given by a great moralist to his friend was, that he should compose his passions; and let that be the work of reason which would certainly be the work of time.—Addison.

A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.—Burke.

There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.—George Eliot.

The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.—Longfellow.

"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire.—Bulwer-Lytton.

All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger.—Joubert.

It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Past.—Let the dead past bury its dead.—Longfellow.

Oh vanished times! splendors eclipsed for aye! Oh suns behind the horizon that have set.—Victor Hugo.

It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.—Martial.

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.—George Eliot.

Patience.—There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.—Bulwer-Lytton.

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.—George Eliot.

Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ills.—Johnson.

There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.—Ruskin.

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.—Epictetus.

Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits.—G. MacDonald.

'Tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself.—Shakespeare.

He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing.—George Herbert.

Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot.—Joubert.

God is with the patient.—Koran.

Patience, the second bravery of man, is, perhaps, greater than the first.—Antonio de Solis.

Patience—the truest fortitude.—Milton.

Patriotism.—In peace patriotism really consists only in this—that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house.—Goethe.

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.—Decatur.

How dear is fatherland to all noble hearts.—Voltaire.

Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!—Daniel Webster.

There can be no affinity nearer than our country.—Plato.

Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.—Gladstone.

Peace.—They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.—Bible.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.—Shakespeare.

Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breed.—Spenser.

Peace gives food to the husbandman, even in the midst of rocks; war brings misery to him, even in the most fertile plains.—Menander.

Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth.—Shakespeare.

A land rejoicing and a people blest.—Pope.

Pedant.—As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too.—S. Smith.

With loads of learned lumber in his head.—Pope.

It is not a circumscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant.—Richter.

Perfection.—It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it can never be reached.—Johnson.

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.—Alfred de Musset.

That historian who would describe a favorite character as faultless raises another at the expense of himself. Zeuxis made five virgins contribute their charms to his single picture of Helen; and it is as vain for the moralist to look for perfection in the mind, as for the painter to expect to find it in the body.—Colton.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.—Michael Angelo.

He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.—Spurgeon.

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.—Tennyson.

Persecution.—Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters forever.—Hazlitt.

Perseverance.—Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds.—Bacon.

Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.—Burke.

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.—Jeremy Collier.

Much rain wears the marble.—Shakespeare.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.—George Eliot.

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Perseverance is not always an indication of great abilities. An indifferent poet is invulnerable to a repulse, the want of sensibility in him being what a noble self-confidence was in Milton. These excluded suitors continue, nevertheless, to hang their garlands at the gate, to anoint the door-post, and even kiss the very threshold of her home, though the Muse beckons them not in.—Wordsworth.

Perverseness.—The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.—George Eliot.

Philosophy.—Philosophy is the art of living.—Plutarch.

Philosophy consists not in airy schemes, or idle speculations; the rule and conduct of all social life is her great province.—Thomson.

The philosopher knows the universe and knows not himself.—Fontaine.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.—Lamartine.

It is a maxim received among philosophers themselves from the days of Aristotle down to those of Sir William Hamilton, that philosophy ceases where truth is acknowledged.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Physiognomy.—It is a point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.—Bacon.

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it; 'tis the short-hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.—Jeremy Collier.

The distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age; but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children.—Locke.

What knowledge is there, of which man is capable, that is not founded on the exterior; the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?—Lavater.

Piety.—Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world and vilifying human nature.—G. H. Lewes.

Piety softens all that courage bears.—Madame Swetchine.

Piety is a kind of modesty. It makes us turn aside our thoughts, as modesty makes us cast down our eyes in the presence of whatever is forbidden.—Joubert.

Piety is not an end, but a means of attaining the highest degree of culture by perfect peace of mind. Hence it is to be observed that those who make piety an end and aim in itself for the most part become hypocrites.—Goethe.

Pity.—Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and, finding it late, bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist; no, sir, I wish him to drive on.—Johnson.

Pity is sworn servant unto love, and this be sure, wherever it begin to make the way, it lets the master in.—Daniel.

Those many that need pity, and those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind.—Jeremy Taylor.

Of all the sisters of Love one of the most charming is Pity.—Alfred de Musset.

Place.—In place there is a license to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse; for in evil the best condition is not to will; the second, not to can.—Lord Bacon.

Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place; and this only by doing that which is great and noble.—Petrarch.

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.—Bruyère.

A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.—Chapin.

Plagiarism.—Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists—wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.—Heinrich Heine.

Pleasure.—Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.—Aristotle.

We have not an hour of life in which our pleasures relish not some pain, our sours some sweetness.—Massinger.

How many there are that take pleasure in toil: that can outrise the sun, outwatch the moon, and outrun the field's wild beasts! merely out of fancy and delectation, they can find out mirth in vociferation, music in the barking of dogs, and be content to be led about the earth, over hedges and through sloughs, by the windings and the shifts of poor affrighted vermin; yet, after all, come off, as Messalina, tired, and not satisfied with all that the brutes can do. But were a man enjoined to this that did not like it, how tedious and how punishable to him would it prove! since, in itself, it differs not from riding post.—Feltham.

Boys immature in knowledge pawn their experience to their present pleasure.—Shakespeare.

'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's pleasures to ourselves. 'Tis like a child's using a little bird—"Oh, poor bird, thou shalt sleep with me"—so lays it in his bosom and stifles it with his hot breath. The bird had rather be in the cold air. And yet, too, 'tis the most pleasing flattery to like what other men like.—Selden.

There is no pleasure but that some pain is nearly allied to it.—Menander.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.—Swift.

Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow.—George Herbert.

Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.—Jeremy Taylor.

Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.—Voltaire.

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.—Young.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.—Johnson.

What would we not give to still have in store the first blissful moment we ever enjoyed!—Rochepèdre.

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.—Montaigne.

Poetry.—Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.—Madame de Staël.

Poetry is the sister of sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.—Marc André.

Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.—Shakespeare.

Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young, and extremely beautiful, whom divers other virgins—namely, all the other sciences—make it their business to enrich, polish, and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give a lustre to them all.—Cervantes.

Poetry is the overflowing of the soul.—Tuckerman.

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire, it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.—Mazzini.

Poetry is the music of thought, conveyed to us in the music of language.—Chatfield.

The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.—Shelley.

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.—Pope.

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.—Ruskin.

Thought in blossom.—Bishop Ken.

It is a ruinous misjudgment, too contemptible to be asserted, but not too contemptible to be acted upon, that the end of poetry is publication.—George MacDonald.

Wisdom married to immortal verse.—Wordsworth.

By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.—Macaulay.

Thoughts, that voluntary move harmonious numbers.—Milton.

The world is so grand and so inexhaustible that subjects for poems should never be wanted. But all poetry should be the poetry of circumstance; that is, it should be inspired by the Real. A particular subject will take a poetic and general character precisely because it is created by a poet. All my poetry is the poetry of circumstance. It wholly owes its birth to the realities of life.—Goethe.

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.—Joubert.

Perhaps there are no warmer lovers of the muse than those who are only permitted occasionally to gain her favors. The shrine is more reverently approached by the pilgrim from afar than the familiar worshiper. Poetry is often more beloved by one whose daily vocation is amid the bustle of the world. We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory!—Tuckerman.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.—Izaak Walton.

Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?" a question which would abolish the rose and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage.—Lowell.

The poetry of earth is never dead.—Keats.

Poets.—Poets, like race-horses, must be fed, not fattened.—Charles IX.

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.—Madame Swetchine.

Modern poets mix much water with their ink.—Goethe.

There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.—Sydney Smith.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.—Wordsworth.

An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.—Holmes.

A little shallowness might be useful to many a poet! What is depth, after all? Is the pit deeper than the shallow mirror which reflects its lowest recesses?—Heinrich Heine.

We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears—a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion!—Heinrich Heine.

I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.—Swift.

Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.—Joubert.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—Shelley.

Poets are far rarer births than kings.—Ben Jonson.

One might discover schools of the poets as distinctly as schools of the painters, by much converse in them, and a thorough taste of their manner of writing.—Pope.

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.—Shelley.

Policy.—He has mastered all points who has combined the useful with the agreeable.—Horace.

At court one becomes a sort of human ant-eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Measures, not men, have always been my mark.—Goldsmith.

In a troubled state, we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.—Seldon.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.—George Eliot.

Politeness.—Politeness is fictitious benevolence. It supplies the place of it among those who see each other only in public, or but little. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have always applied to good breeding what Addison, in his "Cato," says of honor: "Honor's a sacred tie: the law of kings; the noble mind's distinguishing perfection; that aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions where she is not."—Johnson.

Self-command is the main elegance.—Emerson.

Politeness smooths wrinkles.—Joubert.

Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers.—De Finod.

Politics.—It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.—Daniel O'Connell.

Those who think must govern those who toil.—Goldsmith.

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.—Swift.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.—Pope.

Wise men and gods are on the strongest side.—Sir C. Sedley.

The thorough-paced politician must laugh at the squeamishness of his conscience, and read it another lecture.—South.

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; an hour may lay it in the dust.—Byron.

Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.—Johnson.

Possessions.—It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.—Shakespeare.

All comes from and will go to others.—George Herbert.

In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.—Charles Buxton.

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.—South.

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.—Montaigne.

Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,—that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.—Johnson.

Posterity.—Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.—Lord Stanley.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.—Colton.

Poverty.—Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want—the want of money.—Zimmerman.

Few save the poor feel for the poor.—L. E. Landon.

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.—Dante.

Riches endless is as poor as winter, to him that ever fears he shall be poor.—Shakespeare.

A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.—Goldsmith.

He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.—Daniel.

The wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Power.—The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.—Carlyle.

Oh for a forty parson power.—Byron.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Praise.—Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.—Colton.

Praise is the best diet for us after all.—Sydney Smith.

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.—Washington Allston.

Damn with faint praise.—Pope.

Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the most part reserved for the gods.—Pythagoras.

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.—Broadhurst.

One good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.—Shakespeare.

Prayer.—The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.—Wellington.

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.—Shakespeare.

'Tis heaven alone that is given away; 'tis only God may be had for the asking.—Lowell.

Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God.—Channing.

The few that pray at all pray oft amiss.—Cowper.

Such words as Heaven alone is fit to hear.—Dryden.

What are men better than sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friends!—Tennyson.

Prayer ardent opens heaven.—Young.

Solicitude is the audience-chamber of God.—Landor.

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.—Chapin.

He prayeth best who loveth best.—Coleridge.

Preaching.—Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?—Selden.

Preface.—Your opening promises some great design.—Horace.

A preface, being the entrance of a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendor of the interior.—Disraeli.

A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface—La salsa del libro—the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself.—Disraeli.

Prejudice.—He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.—J. Stuart Mill.

Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.—Aubrey de Vere.

All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.—Pope.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.—Voltaire.

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.—Diderot.

Present, The.—Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.—Goethe.

Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.—Schiller.

'Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.—Bovée.

The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.—Thoreau.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it.—Lamartine.

Presentiment.—We walk in the midst of secrets—we are encompassed with mysteries. We know not what takes place in the atmosphere that surrounds us—we know not what relations it has with our minds. But one thing is sure, that, under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason, and that the power is given it to antedate the future,—ay, to see into the future.—Goethe.

We should not neglect a presentiment. Every man has within him a spark of divine radiance which is often the torch which illumines the darkness of our future.—Madame de Girardin.

Press.—The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.—B. Disraeli.

Presumption.—Presumption is our natural and original disease.—Montaigne.

Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Cæsar comes once to pass the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not how much he trashes further.—South.

He that presumes steps into the throne of God.—South.

Pretence.—As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Pretension.—Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.—L'Estrange.

Pride.—I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.—Ruskin.

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear—they eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.—Alexander Smith.

When pride thaws look for floods.—Bailey.

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.—Frederick Saunders.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.—Johnson.

Principles.—Principle is a passion for truth.—Hazlitt.

Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.—Richter.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.—G. H. Lewes.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.—Emerson.

What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery."—Bulwer-Lytton.

The change we personally experience from time to time we obstinately deny to our principles.—Zimmerman.

Printing.—Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.—George Meredith.

Prison.—Young Crime's finishing school.—Mrs. Balfour.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.—Beecher.

Procrastination.—Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.—Charles Buxton.

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.—Hesiod.

There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.—Madame Swetchine.

Prodigality.—This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.—Dr. South.

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.—Goldsmith.

The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.—Socrates.

Progress.—All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.—Gibbon.

What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.—X. Doudan.

Revolutions never go backwards.—Emerson.

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.—Bartol.

Progress is lame.—St. Bueve.

We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.—George Eliot.

The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.—G. H. Lewes.

Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.—Mazzini.

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.—Heinrich Heine.

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.—Mazzini.

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.—Longfellow.

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.—Emerson.

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.—Mazzini.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Promise.—Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and gratitude a thread.—J. Petit Senn.

Proof.—In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses.—Cicero.

Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon.—Shakespeare.

Prosperity.—Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.—Vauvenargues.

That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.—Johnson.

Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.—Æschylus.

Prosperity lets go the bridle.—George Herbert.

Proverbs.—Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.—Bishop Whately.

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.—Motherwell.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.—Lavater.

Prudence.—There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure.—Rochefoucauld.

Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters.—Whitfield.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.—Aristophanes.

Punctuality.—The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.—Brillat Savarin.

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Punishment.—One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.—Juvenal.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.—Plato.

Punishment is lame, but it comes.—George Herbert.

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.—Locke.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?—George Eliot.

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.—Goldsmith.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.—Cato.

The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!—Hawthorne.

Puns.—I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they ought to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.—Sydney Smith.

Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense.—Addison.

Purposes.—Man proposes, but God disposes.—Thomas à Kempis.

A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.—Bible.

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.—Herodotus.

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.—Smiles.

Pursuit.—The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.—Longfellow.

The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.—Lady Montagu.

Q.

Quacks.—Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax—the folly and ignorance of mankind.—Colton.

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.—Thoreau.

Qualities.—Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.—Goethe.

Quarrels.—Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.—George Eliot.

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.—Mme. Necker.

Questions.—There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?—Johnson.

Quotation.—In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.—Selden.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.—Jeremy Taylor.

If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.—Burke.

It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.—Coleridge.

Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places.—Hannah More.

I take memorandums of the schools.—Swift.

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.—Mazzini.

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.—Trublet.

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.—Coleridge.

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.—J. Petit Senn.

As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.—De Quincey.

R.

Rain.—Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.—Roscommon.

The kind refresher of the summer heats.—Thomson.

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.—Waller.

The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.—Dryden.

Rainbow.—That smiling daughter of the storm.—Colton.

Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.—J. C. Prince.

God's glowing covenant.—Hosea Ballou.

Rank.—If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.—Madame Swetchine.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.—Wycherley.

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.—Southerne.

Rashness.—Rashness and haste make all things insecure.—Denham.

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.—Shakespeare.

Reading.—Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.—Congreve.

Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.—Milton.

The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.—Montesquieu.

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars.—Macaulay.

Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.—Shakespeare.

The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet.—Coleridge.

Reason.—Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.—George Herbert.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.—Voltaire.

If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.—Shakespeare.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.—Bolingbroke.

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.—Joubert.

I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so, because I think him so.—Shakespeare.

Reason 's progressive; instinct is complete: swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.—Young.

Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near,—sees nothing that's above her.—Quarles.

How can finite grasp infinity?—Dryden.

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.—Goethe.

Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart.—Heinrich Heine.

Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.—Shakespeare.

Reason may cure illusions but not suffering.—Alfred de Musset.

Reciprocity.—There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word is reciprocity. What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.—Confucius.

Reconciliation.—It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.—Owen Feltham.

Rectitude.—The great high-road of human welfare lies along the highway of steadfast well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.—Samuel Smiles.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.—Thoreau.

No man can do right unless he is good, wise, and strong. What wonder we fail?—Charles Buxton.

Refinement.—Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.—Beecher.

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.—Beecher.

Reflection.—We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.—Sydney Smith.

Reform.—We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old—reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.—Emerson.

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.—Milton.

Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, to curb desire, to break the stubborn will, and work a second nature in the soul.—Rowe.

They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!—Shakespeare.

Regret.—Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache?—Richter.

Religion.—Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.—Emerson.

I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy!—Sydney Smith.

Nowhere would there be consolation if religion were not.—Jacobi.

Monopolies are just as injurious to religion as to trade. With competition religions preserve their strength, but they will never again flourish in their original glory until religious freedom, or, in other words, free trade among the gods, is introduced.—Heinrich Heine.

A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force, and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair.—Channing.

Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded.—J. Petit Senn.

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.—Shelley.

The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a certain range, subject to wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel.—Gladstone.

The best religion is the most tolerant.—Emile de Girardin.

Remembrance.—The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.—Cato.

Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.—Boufflers.

Remorse.—Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.—Joubert.

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.—Rousseau.

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.—Shakespeare.

Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.—Gray.

Repartee.—The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.—Molière.

Repentance.—-Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.—Sterling.

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.—Quarles.

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.—Moore.

Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away?—Anna Cora Ritchie.

Repentance is second innocence.—De Bonald.

Repose.—Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.—Sydney Smith.

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.—Plutarch.

Reproach.—Few love to hear the sins they love to act.—Shakespeare.

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.—Mrs. Balfour.

Republic.—Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.—Walpole.

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion, might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."—Heinrich Heine.

At twenty, every one is republican.—Lamartine.

Reputation.—Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.—Sydney Smith.

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.—Tacitus.

Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.—Washington Allston.

My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.—Bacon.

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.—Johnson.

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.—Laténa.

Request.—No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.—Cæsar.

He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.—Lavater.

Resignation.—O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.—Fénelon.

Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.—Mountford.

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal thanks.—Shakespeare.

Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pass that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.—Robert Collyer.

Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.—Thomson.

"My will, not thine, be done," turned Paradise into a desert. "Thy will, not mine, be done," turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.—Pressense.

Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.—Dr. Vinet.

Responsibility.—Responsibility educates.—Wendell Phillips.

Restlessness.—The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity—a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.—Goethe.

Always driven towards new shores, or carried hence without hope of return, shall we never, on the ocean of age cast anchor for even a day?—Lamartine.

Retribution.—Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.—George Eliot.

"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.—George Eliot.

Revenge.—Revenge at first, though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils.—Milton.

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.—Colton.

There are some professed Christians who would gladly burn their enemies, but yet who forgive them merely because it is heaping coals of fire on their heads.—F. A. Durivage.

Revery.—In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.—Wordsworth.

Revolution.—The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.—Herder.

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.—Mazzini.

All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.—Jefferson.

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution hut what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.—Ledru Rollin.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.—Victor Hugo.

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always lie proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.—Macaulay.

Let them call it mischief; when it's past and prospered, 't will be virtue.—Ben Jonson.

Rhetoric.—In composition, it is the art of putting ideas together in graceful and accurate prose; in speaking, it is the art of delivering ideas with propriety, elegance, and force; or, in other words, it is the science of oratory.—Locke.

Rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with a free expression, when they understand not reason.—Selden.

The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to cheated into passion, but reasoned into truth.—Dryden.

All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.—Locke.

Rhetoric is very good, or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.—Selden.

Riches.—The shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches.—Seneca.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.—Johnson.

Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.—Bonnell.

If the search for riches were sure to be successful, though I should become a groom with a whip in my hand to get them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow after that which I love.—Confucius.

I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, more money, that he may still get more. He is still drudging, saying what Solomon says, "The diligent hand maketh rich." And it is true, indeed; but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said by a man of great observation that "there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them."—Izaak Walton.

Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit, than he who bestows one.—Owen Feltham.

In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.—Joubert.

Ridicule.—Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off, not a stone goes through.—Beecher.

Rogues.—Rogues are always found out in some way. Whoever is a wolf will act as a wolf; that is the most certain of all things.—La Fontaine.

Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.—Hazlitt.

Ruin.—To be ruined your own way is some comfort. When so many people would ruin us, it is a triumph over the villany of the world to be ruined after one's own pattern.—Douglas Jerrold.

S.

Sacrifice.—You cannot win without sacrifice.—Charles Buxton.

What you most repent of is a lasting sacrifice made under an impulse of good-nature. The good-nature goes, the sacrifice sticks.—Charles Buxton.

Sadness.—Take my word for it, the saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness.—Countess de Gasparin.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.—Thoreau.

Salary.—Other rules vary; this is the only one you will find without exception: That in this world the salary or reward is always in the inverse ratio of the duties performed.—Sydney Smith.

Sarcasm.—A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick—it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it—sharp and deadly and incisive—which makes you tremble and recoil.—Sydney Smith.

Satire.—To lash the vices of a guilty age.—Churchill.

Thou shining supplement of public laws!—Young.

By satire kept in awe, shrink from ridicule, though not from law.—Byron.

When dunces are satiric I take it for a panegyric.—Swift.

Scandal.—Believe that story false that ought not to be true.—Sheridan.

Scandal has something so piquant, it is a sort of cayenne to the mind.—Byron.

School.—More is learned in a public than in a private school from emulation: there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre—Johnson.

Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad,—a person less imposing,—in the eyes of some, perhaps, insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.—Brougham.

The whining school-boy, with his satchel, and shining morning face, creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school.—Shakespeare.

Science.—They may say what they like; everything is organized matter. The tree is the first link of the chain, man is the last. Men are young, the earth is old. Vegetable and animal chemistry are still in their infancy. Electricity, galvanism,—what discoveries in a few years!—Napoleon.

Human science is uncertain guess.—Prior.

Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.—Prof. Hitchcock.

Science is a first rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.—Holmes.

Scriptures.—The majesty of Scripture strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.—Rousseau.

Secrecy.—Thou hast betrayed thy secret as a bird betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.—Longfellow.

Never confide your secrets to paper: it is like throwing a stone in the air, and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.—Calderon.

People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.—Hazlitt.

Sect.—The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.—Macaulay.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.—Voltaire.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.—De Quincey.

Self-Abnegation.—'Tis much the doctrine of the times that men should not please themselves, but deny themselves everything they take delight in; not look upon beauty, wear no good clothes, eat no good meat, etc., which seems the greatest accusation that can be upon the Maker of all good things. If they are not to be used why did God make them?—Selden.

Self-abnegation, that rare virtue that good men preach and good women practice.—Holmes.

Self-Examination.—We neither know nor judge ourselves,—others may judge, but cannot know us,—God alone judges, and knows too.—Wilkie Collins.

It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.—George Eliot.

There are two persons in the world we never see as they are,—one's self and one's other self.—Arsène Houssaye.

Selfishness.—Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor his infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.—Hannah More.

It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.—George Eliot.

There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive,—the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Self-Love.—That household god, a man's own self.—Flavel.

The greatest of all flatterers is self-love.—Rochefoucauld.

Self-love exaggerates both our faults and our virtues.—Goethe.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.—Rochefoucauld.

Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.—Ruffini.

A prudent consideration for Number One.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.—Erasmus.

The most inhibited sin in the canon.—Shakespeare.

Ofttimes nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.—Milton.

Whose thoughts are centered on thyself alone.—Dryden.

Self-reliance.—The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.—Samuel Smiles.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.—Bovée.

A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.—Livy.

The supreme fall of falls is this, the first doubt of one's self.—Countess de Gasparin.

It's right to trust in God; but if you don't stand to your halliards, your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.—George MacDonald.

The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.—Emerson.

Sensibility.—The wild-flower wreath of feeling, the sunbeam of the heart.—Halleck.

Sensibility is the power of woman.—Lavater.

Feeling loves a subdued light.—Madame Swetchine.

Sensitiveness.—Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.—George Eliot.

That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.—Burke.

Sentiment.—Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?—Emerson.

Separation.—Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.—Madame Swetchine.

Shakespeare.—There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.—Heinrich Heine.

Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears.—T. B. Shaw.

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.—Goethe.

In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.—Coleridge.

No man is too busy to read Shakespeare.—Charles Buxton.

Shakespeare's personages live and move as if they had just come from the hand of God, with a life that, though manifold, is one, and, though complex, is harmonious.—Mazzini.

Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child.—Milton.

And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.—Campbell.

Shakespeare is one of the best means of culture the world possesses. Whoever is at home in his pages is at home everywhere.—H. N. Hudson.

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.—Emerson.

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.—O. W. Holmes.

Whatever other learning he wanted he was master of two books unknown to many profound readers, though books which the last conflagration can alone destroy. I mean the book of Nature and of Man.—Young.

If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.—Macaulay.

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.—Johnson.

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.—Keats.

Shame.—Nature's hasty conscience.—Maria Edgeworth.

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.—Goldsmith.

Ship.—A prison with the chance of being drowned.—Johnson.

Cradle of the rude imperious surge.—Shakespeare.

Silence.—The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.—Shakespeare.

True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak.—Ben Jonson.

I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.—Zeno.

Silence in times of suffering is the best.—Dryden.

Silence! coeval with eternity.—Pope.

Silence is the sanctuary of prudence.—Balthasar Gracian.

The unspoken word never does harm.—Kossuth.

Silence is the understanding of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.—Bonnard.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.—George Eliot.

Silence gives consent.—Goldsmith.

Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.—Zimmerman.

Simplicity.—Simplicity is doubtless a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.—Madame de Girardin.

Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.—P. J. Bailey.

The world could not exist if it were not simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.—Goethe.

The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model, without miracle, without extravagance.—Montaigne.

There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.—Pope.

Sin.—Original sin is in us like the beard: we are shaved to-day, and look clean, and have a smooth chin; to-morrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. In like manner original sin cannot be extirpated from us; it springs up in us as long as we exist; Nevertheless, we are bound to resist it to our utmost strength, and to cut it down unceasingly.—Luther.

Sin, in fancy, mothers many an ugly fact.—Theodore Parker.

There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and sure to one and all.—Hosea Ballou.

Every man has his devilish minutes.—Lavater.

Death from sin no power can separate.—Milton.

Our sins, like to our shadows, when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared. Towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!—Sir J. Suckling.

'Tis the will that makes the action good or ill.—Herrick.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.—Sir Walter Scott.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.—Shakespeare.

Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.—Plato.

Sin and her shadow death.—Milton.

If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do it; and if ye do evil, against yourselves will ye do it.—Koran.

It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.—Boileau.

There are sins of omission as well as those of commission.—Madame Deluzy.

Sincerity.—Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.—Tillotson.

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.—Coleridge.

Skepticism.—Skepticism is slow suicide.—Emerson.

Skill.—Nobody, however able, can gain the very highest success, except in one line. He may rise above others, but he will fall below himself.—Charles Buxton.

Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.—Walter Scott.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.—Gibbon.

Slander.—Done to death by slanderous tongues.—Shakespeare.

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.—Douglas Jerrold.

Slander lives upon succession, forever housed where it gets possession.—Shakespeare.

When the absent are spoken of, some will speak gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and some always speak dirt, for they have a natural attraction towards what is evil, and think it shows penetration in them. As a cat watching for mice does not look up though an elephant goes by, so are they so busy mousing for defects, that they let great excellences pass them unnoticed. I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you are such an one.—Beecher.

If parliament were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as sporting on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame as well as game, there are many would thank them for the bill.—Sheridan.

Sleep.—When one asked Alexander how he could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of danger, he told them that Parmenio watched. Oh, how securely may they sleep over whom He watches that never slumbers nor sleeps! "I will," said David, "lay me down and sleep, for thou, Lord, makest me to dwell in safety."—Venning.

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.—Shakespeare.

Sleep is no servant of the will; it has caprices of its own; when courted most, it lingers still; when most pursued, 'tis swiftly gone.—Bowring.

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.—Bible.

Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.—Alcott.

Night's sepulchre.—Byron.

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.—Donne.

Sleep, to the homeless thou art home; the friendless find in thee a friend.—Ebenezer Elliott.

The soul shares not the body's rest.—Maturin.

Our foster nurse of nature is repose.—Shakespeare.

Sloth.—Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.—Colton.

Smile.—A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy—the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby.—Haliburton.

Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.—Winthrop.

Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.—Shakespeare.

The smile that was childlike and bland.—Bret Harte.

A soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.—Victor Hugo.

Sneer.—The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.—Hazlitt.

Society.—If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.—Lavater.

Formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.—Byron.

Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.—Emerson.

We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.—Chamfort.

Society is the union of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and yet man may remain.—Montesquieu.

There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.—Taine.

Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.—Tuckerman.

Intercourse is the soul of progress.—Charles Buxton.

One ought to love society if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.—Zimmermann.

The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.—Madame Roland.

The more I see of men the better I think of animals.—Tauler.

Soldier.—A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.—Shakespeare.

Policy goes beyond strength, and contrivance before action; hence it is that direction is left to the commander, execution to the soldier, who is not to ask Why? but to do what he is commanded.—Xenophon.

Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.—Schiller.

Soldiers looked at as they ought to be: they are to the world as poppies to corn fields.—Douglas Jerrold.

Solitude.—Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.—Johnson.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.—Addison.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.—Gibbon.

Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.—Byron.

Through the wide world he only is alone who lives not for another.—Rogers.

Solitude is the worst of all companions when we seek comfort and oblivion.—Méry.

Sophistry.—The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.—Coleridge.

There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.—Sir W. Raleigh.

Sorrow.—Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.—Shelley.

If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e'er I did commit.—Shakespeare.

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.—Gray.

The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.—Seneca.

Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.—Keats.

The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.—Sir P. Sidney.

Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.—Tennyson.

Sorrow being the natural and direct offspring of sin, that which first brought sin into the world must, by necessary consequence, bring in sorrow too.—South.

In extent sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is small. It drowns few.—Charles Buxton.

It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.—Chapin.

The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.—Bulwer-Lytton.

Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.—Moore.

Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.—Shakespeare.

Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.—Mazzini.

Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.—Schiller.

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.—Jeremy Taylor.

Soul.—Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.—Rousseau.