Chapter 8

All is of God. If He but wave His hand, The mists collect, the rains fall thick and loud; Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of life and death alike are His; Without His leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against His messengers to shut the door? --LONGFELLOW.

"God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." * * * Wheresoever I turn my eyes, behold the memorials of His greatness! of His goodness! * * * What the world contains of good is from His free and unrequited mercy: what it presents of real evil arises from ourselves.--BISHOP BLOMFIELD.

GOLD.--Gold, like the sun, which melts wax and hardens clay, expands great souls and contracts bad hearts.--RIVAROL.

There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp,--gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station.--COLTON.

Gold is Cæsar's treasure, man is God's; thy gold hath Cæsar's image, and thou hast God's; give, therefore, those things unto Cæsar which are Cæsar's, and unto God which are God's.--QUARLES.

Foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets; But gold, that's put to use, more gold begets. --SHAKESPEARE.

Gold is the fool's curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.--FELTHAM.

O cursed lust of gold! when for thy sake The fool throws up his interest in both worlds. --BLAIR.

How few, like Daniel, have God and gold together!--GEORGE VILLIERS.

Gold adulterates one thing only,--the human heart.--MARGUERITE DE VALOIS.

GOODNESS.--A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.--BASIL.

It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.--SOPHOCLES.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.--POPE.

Every day should be distinguished by at least one particular act of love.--LAVATER.

He that is a good man is three-quarters of his way towards the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called.--SOUTH.

A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men are to their friends. --BISHOP HALL.

Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year; you will never be forgotten. No, your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.--CHALMERS.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither praise nor reward, though sure of both at last.--WILLIAM PENN.

What is good-looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle, generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.--WHITTIER.

Some good we all can do; and if we do all that is in our power, however little that power may be, we have performed our part, and may be as near perfection as those whose influence extends over kingdoms, and whose good actions are felt and applauded by thousands.--BOWDLER.

GOVERNMENT.--The administration of government, like a guardianship, ought to be directed to the good of those who confer and not of those who receive the trust.--CICERO.

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things. --SENECA.

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable.--MADISON.

The best government is not that which renders men the happiest, but that which renders the greatest number happy.--DUCLOS.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades,--that of government.--SOCRATES.

In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.--BEECHER.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.--GLADSTONE.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

Those who think must govern those who toil.--GOLDSMITH.

GRACE.--Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.--DRYDEN.

The mother grace of all the graces is Christian good-will.--BEECHER.

All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment,--divested of affectation and free from all pretence.--FUSELI.

Grace has been defined, the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.--HAZLITT.

GRATITUDE.--Gratitude is a virtue disposing the mind to an inward sense and an outward acknowledgment of a benefit received, together with a readiness to return the same, or the like, as occasions of the doer of it shall require, and the abilities of the receiver extend to.

He who receives a good turn, should never forget it: he who does one, should never remember it.--CHARRON.

O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.--SHAKESPEARE.

What causes such a miscalculation in the amount of gratitude which men expect for the favors they have done, is, that the pride of the giver and that of the receiver can never agree as to the value of the benefit.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parents, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of man due to our Father in heaven!--HOSEA BALLOU.

GRAVE.--There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.--JOB 3:17, 18, 19.

We go to the grave of a friend saying, "A man is dead;" but angels throng about him, saying, "A man is born."--BEECHER.

Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame.--CHAPIN.

There is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave!--the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.--WASHINGTON IRVING.

What is the grave? 'Tis a cool, shady harbor, where the Christian Wayworn and weary with life's rugged road, Forgetting all life's sorrows, joys, and pains, Lays his poor body down to rest-- Sleeps on--and wakes in heaven.

GREATNESS.--He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.--LAVATER.

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.--CHANNING.

Great minds, like heaven, are pleased in doing good, Though the ungrateful subjects of their favors Are barren in return. --ROWE.

Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are the portions of eternity. --LOWELL.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.--CARLYLE.

If the title of great man ought to be reserved for him who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of honor, justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle--this title will not be denied to Washington.--SPARKS.

He only is great who has the habits of greatness; who, after performing what none in ten thousand could accomplish, passes on like Samson, and "tells neither father nor mother of it."--LAVATER.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.--HAZLITT.

In life, we shall find many men that are great, and some men that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.--COLTON.

A really great man is known by three signs,--generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, and moderation in success.--BISMARCK.

Nothing can make a man truly great but being truly good and partaking of God's holiness.--MATTHEW HENRY.

The greatest truths are the simplest; so are the greatest men.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.--SHAKESPEARE.

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.--EMERSON.

GRIEF.--Grief is the culture of the soul, it is the true fertilizer. --MADAME DE GIRARDIN.

Light griefs are plaintive, but great ones are dumb.--SENECA.

If the internal griefs of every man could be read, written on his forehead, how many who now excite envy would appear to be the objects of pity?--METASTASIO.

Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.--XENOPHON.

All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.--MADAME SWETCHINE.

What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.--GREVILLE.

They truly mourn that mourn without a witness.--BYRON.

Alas! I have not words to tell my grief; To vent my sorrow would be some relief; Light sufferings give us leisure to complain; We groan, we cannot speak, in greater pain. --DRYDEN.

It is folly to tear one's hair in sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.--CICERO.

Dr. Holmes says, both wittily and truly, that crying widows are easiest consoled.--H.W. SHAW.

Who fails to grieve, when just occasion calls, Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest: Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart. --YOUNG.

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate.--HORACE GREELEY.

Every one can master a grief but he that has it.--SHAKESPEARE.

GRUMBLING.--When a man is full of the Holy Ghost, he is the very last man to be complaining of other people.--D.L. MOODY.

Every one must see daily instances of people who complain from a mere habit of complaining.--GRAVES.

There is an unfortunate disposition in a man to attend much more to the faults of his companions which offend him, than to their perfections which please him.--GREVILLE.

No talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, is required to set up in the grumbling business; but those who are moved by a genuine desire to do good have little time for murmuring or complaint.--ROBERT WEST.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, "It is all barren."--STERNE.

GUILT.--Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Their own frauds, their crimes, their remembrances of the past, their terrors of the future,--these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the mind of the impious.--ROBERT HALL.

Guilt alone, like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mood, fills the light air with visionary terrors, and shapeless forms of fear.--JUNIUS.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; while the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

He who is conscious of secret and dark designs, which, if known, would blast him, is perpetually shrinking and dodging from public observation, and is afraid of all around him, and much more of all above him.--WIRT.

They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.--SHAKESPEARE.

Life is not the supreme good; but of all earthly ills the chief is guilt.--SCHILLER.

They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.--SOUTHEY.

Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman. --SENECA.

HABIT.--Habits are soon assumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.--COWPER.

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.--G.D. BOARDMAN.

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink drop soileth the pure white page.--HOSEA BALLOU.

Habits are like the wrinkles on a man's brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.--H.W. SHAW.

A large part of Christian virtue consists in right habits.--PALEY.

Habit is ten times nature.--WELLINGTON.

Habit is the most imperious of all masters.--GOETHE.

I will govern my life and my thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and to read the other; for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God (who is the searcher of our hearts) all our privacies are open?--SENECA.

The will that yields the first time with some reluctance does so the second time with less hesitation, and the third time with none at all, until presently the habit is adopted.--HENRY GILES.

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.--COLTON.

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.--MRS. SIGOURNEY.

I will be a slave to no habit; therefore farewell tobacco.--HOSEA BALLOU.

HAPPINESS.--He who is good is happy.--HABBINGTON.

If solid happiness we prize, Within our breast this jewel lies; And they are fools who roam: The world has nothing to bestow, From our own selves our joys must flow, And that dear hut, our home. --COTTON.

The common course of things is in favor of happiness; happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want.--PALEY.

Happiness and virtue react upon each other,--the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.--LYTTON.

God loves to see his creatures happy; our lawful delight is His; they know not God that think to please Him with making themselves miserable. The idolaters thought it a fit service for Baal to cut and lance themselves; never any holy man looked for thanks from the true God by wronging himself.--BISHOP HALL.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit!--HOSEA BALLOU.

Degrees of happiness vary according to the degrees of virtue, and consequently, that life which is most virtuous is most happy.--NORRIS.

Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.--DICKENS.

The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.--ADDISON.

To be happy is not only to be freed from the pains and diseases of the body, but from anxiety and vexation of spirit; not only to enjoy the pleasures of sense, but peace of conscience and tranquillity of mind. --TILLOTSON.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.--HAWTHORNE.

The happiness of the tender heart is increased by what it can take away from the wretchedness of others.--J. PETIT-SENN.

There is no man but may make his paradise.--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions,--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasant thought and feeling.--COLERIDGE.

To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world. --FROUDE.

The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to command them.--FROM THE FRENCH.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are enabled to inspire.--DUCHESSE DE PRASLIN.

HATRED.--The passion of hatred is so durable and so inveterate that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is a wish for reconciliation.--BRUYÈRE.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.--COLTON.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.--PLUTARCH.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.--BALZAC.

It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him whom you have injured.--TACITUS.

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.--LAMARTINE.

The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.--J. PETIT-SENN.

The hatred of persons related to each other is the most violent. --TACITUS.

When our hatred is too keen it places us beneath those we hate. --LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

HEALTH.--The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor.--SIR W. TEMPLE.

There is this difference between those two temporal blessings, health and money: Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied: and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.--COLTON.

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.--LYTTON.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words, health, peace and competence: But health consists with temperance alone; And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thy own. --POPE.

O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.--STERNE.

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.--STERNE.

Health and good humor are to the human body like sunshine to vegetation.--MASSILLON.

One means very effectual for the preservation of health is a quiet and cheerful mind, not afflicted with violent passions or distracted with immoderate cares.--JOHN RAY.

The requirements of health, and the style of female attire which custom enjoins, are in direct antagonism to each other.--ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON.

For life is not to live, but to be well.--MARTIAL.

From labor health, from health contentment springs.--BEATTIE.

In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body in overwork of the brain--LYTTON.

The rule is simple: Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy.--FRANKLIN.

HEART.--Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.--PROVERBS 4:23.

The poor too often turn away unheard, From hearts that shut against them with a sound That will be heard in heaven. --LONGFELLOW.

He who has most of heart knows most of sorrow.--BAILEY.

All offences come from the heart.--SHAKESPEARE.

Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly. Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God's blessing, but constant in looking to Him.--RICHTER.

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.--MATTHEW 12:34.

Do you think that any one can move the heart but He that made it? --JOHN LYLY.

When a young man complains that a young lady has no heart, it is pretty certain that she has his.--G.D. PRENTICE.

The heart never grows better by age, I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.--CHESTERFIELD.

A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.--GIBBON.

The heart that has once been bathed in love's pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.--LANDOR.

A loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.--WHITTIER.

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.--TRENCH.

There are treasures laid up in the heart,--treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world.--BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?--JEREMIAH 17:9.

HEAVEN.--The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.--LAVATER.

The redeemed shall walk there.--ISAIAH 35:9.

If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world!--HOSEA BALLOU.

Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

I cannot be content with less than heaven.--BAILEY.