Part 6

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.--LYTTON.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.--EMERSON.

The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as a leader. --ARTHUR HELPS.

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

ENVY.--There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.--SHERIDAN.

An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.--SOCRATES.

As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man.--ST. CHRYSOSTOM.

We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.--PLINY.

Base envy withers at another's joy, And hates that excellence it cannot reach. --THOMSON.

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow-creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!--STEELE.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.--COLTON.

Envy--the rottenness of the bones.--PROVERBS 14:30.

There is no guard to be kept against envy, because no man knows where it dwells, and generous and innocent men are seldom jealous and suspicious till they feel the wound.

Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees.--SAADI.

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by a defeat.--COLTON.

Envy is a passion so full of cowardice and shame, that nobody ever had the confidence to own it.--ROCHESTER.

ETERNITY.--He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.--COLTON.

Let us be adventurers for another world. It is at least a fair and noble chance; and there is nothing in this worth our thoughts or our passions. If we should be disappointed, we are still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we are eternally happy.--BURNET.

Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of eternity.--BISHOP HEBER.

The vaulted void of purple sky That everywhere extends, That stretches from the dazzled eye, In space that never ends; A morning whose uprisen sun No setting e'er shall see; A day that comes without a noon, Such is eternity. --CLARE.

"What is eternity?" was a question once asked at the Deaf and Dumb Institution at Paris, and the beautiful and striking answer was given by one of the pupils, "The lifetime of the Almighty."--JOHN BATE.

If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven. --TILLOTSON.

EVIL.--The doing an evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.--COLERIDGE.

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. --SHAKESPEARE.

Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart. --HOOD.

To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil with evil is evil.--MOHAMMED.

We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.--DESMAHIS.

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.--EMERSON.

If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not. --FRANKLIN.

As sure as God is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.--SOUTHEY.

In the history of man it has been very generally the case that when evils have grown insufferable they have touched the point of cure. --CHAPIN.

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope, and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of wisdom and love.--CHANNING.

EXAMPLE.--Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.--REV. R. CECIL.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.--GOLDSMITH.

A wise and good man will turn examples of all sorts to his own advantage. The good he will make his patterns, and strive to equal or excel them. The bad he will by all means avoid.--THOMAS À KEMPIS.

None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.--FRANKLIN.

No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.--HOSEA BALLOU.

I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.--HERODOTUS.

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.--H.W. SHAW.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.--QUARLES.

Example is contagious behavior.--CHARLES READE.

The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but he went about doing good. --HORACE MANN.

The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.--DR. JOHNSON.

EXCESS.--Excess always carries its own retribution.--OUIDA.

The misfortune is, that when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety.--KNOX.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. --SHAKESPEARE.

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.--COLTON.

The body oppressed by excesses, bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with. --HORACE.

Every morsel to a satisfied hunger is only a new labor to a tired digestion.--SOUTH.

Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal. --ST. EVREMOND.

EXERCISE.--A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick.--SIR W. TEMPLE.

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.--CICERO.

There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.--BEECHER.

Exercise is the chief source of improvement in all our faculties. --BLAIR.

You will never live to my age without you keep yourself in breath with exercise.--SIR P. SIDNEY.

EXPERIENCE.--To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.--BAYARD TAYLOR.

Experience join'd with common sense, To mortals is a providence. --GREEN.

Experience does take dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.--CARLYLE.

No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience, would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted, he knew nothing; and that those ideas, which in theory appeared the most advantageous, were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. --TERENCE.

Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.--H.W. SHAW.

It may serve as a comfort to us in all our calamities and afflictions that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss.--L'ESTRANGE.

To wilful men, The injuries that they themselves procure, Must be their schoolmasters. --SHAKESPEARE.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.--FRANKLIN.

All is but lip wisdom which wants experience.--SIR P. SIDNEY.

EXTRAVAGANCE.--He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.--DR. JOHNSON.

The man who builds, and wants wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away. --YOUNG.

FAITH.--What we believe, we must believe wholly and without reserve; wherefore the only perfect and satisfying object of faith is God. A faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no farther, is none.

Faith is the key that unlocks the cabinet of God's treasures; the king's messenger from the celestial world, to bring all the supplies we need out of the fullness that there is in Christ.--J. STEPHENS.

Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next.--YOUNG.

It is impossible to be a hero in anything unless one is first a hero in faith.--JACOBI.

Faith is not the lazy notion that a man may with careless confidence throw his burden upon the Saviour and trouble himself no further, a pillow upon which he lulls his conscience to sleep, till he drops into perdition; but a living and vigorous principle, working by love, and inseparably connected with true repentance as its motive and with holy obedience as its fruits.

Faith is the root of all good works. A root that produces nothing is dead.--BISHOP WILSON.

The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.--ADDISON.

The highest historical probability can be adduced in support of the proposition that, if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual system of the moral world.--EDWARD EVERETT.

He had great faith in loaves of bread For hungry people, young and old, And hope inspired; kind words he said To those he sheltered from the cold. In words he did not put his trust; His faith in words he never writ; He loved to share his cup and crust With all mankind who needed it. He put his trust in Heaven and he Worked well with hand and head; And what he gave in charity Sweetened his sleep and daily bread.

No cloud can overshadow a true Christian but his faith will discern a rainbow in it.--BISHOP HORNE.

Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.--LOWELL.

FAME.--None despise fame more heartily than those who have no possible claim to it.--J. PETIT-SENN.

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.--SIMMS.

Though fame is smoke, its fumes are frankincense to human thoughts. --BYRON.

He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause.--SHAKESPEARE.

Whatever may be the temporary applause of men, or the expressions of public opinion, it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that no true and permanent fame can be founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.--CHARLES SUMNER.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else,--very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now let us be a celebrated individual!"--HOLMES.

It is a very indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares so much about fame; about what the world says of us; to be always looking in the faces of others for approval; to be always anxious about the effect of what we do or say; to be always shouting, to hear the echoes of our own voices.--LONGFELLOW.

The way to fame is like the way to heaven--through much tribulation. --STERNE.

Nor fame I slight, nor for her favors call: She comes unlook'd for, if she comes at all. --POPE.

Write your name in kindness, love and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten.--CHALMERS.

The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore. --BYRON.

FASHION.--Fashion's smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, except virtue.--COLTON.

A woman would be in despair if Nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear.--MLLE. DE L'ESPINASSE.

Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.--J.G. HOLLAND.

Fashion is among the last influences under which a human being who respects himself, or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed.--CHANNING.

The Empress of France had but to change the position of a ribbon to set all the ribbons in Christendom to rustling. A single word from her convulsed the whalebone market of the world.--J.G. HOLLAND.

A fashionable woman is always in love--with herself.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.--CHAMFORT.

Fashion, a word which knaves and fools may use Their knavery and folly to excuse. --CHURCHILL.

FEAR.--The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.--PSALM 111:10.

O, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long,-- Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. --LONGFELLOW.

Fear not the proud and the haughty; fear rather him who fears God. --SAADI.

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.--GOLDSMITH.

The fear of God is freedom, joy, and peace; And makes all ills that vex us here to cease. --WALLER.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?--PSALM 27:1.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil.--DR. JOHNSON.

God planted fear in the soul as truly as He planted hope or courage. Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.--BEECHER.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.--1 JOHN 4:18.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.--GEORGE SEWELL.

Fear not; for I am with thee.--ISAIAH 43:5.

FIDELITY.--To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.--VAUGHAN.

He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.--GEORGE MACDONALD.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; His tears, pure messengers sent from his heart; His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth. --SHAKESPEARE.

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.--CICERO.

Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend, who will stand firm when others fail; the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous,--in such a one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages.--DEAN STANLEY.

FLATTERY.--Those are generally good at flattering who are good for nothing else.--SOUTH.

If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again, though he were my best friend.--FRANKLIN.

No flatt'ry, boy! an honest man can't live by't; It is a little sneaking art, which knaves Use to cajole and soften fools withal. If thou hast flatt'ry in thy nature, out with't; Or send it to a court, for there 'twill thrive. --OTWAY.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.--RICHARDSON.

Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies.--TACITUS.

It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour the dead only, these the living.--ANTISTHENES.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.--SWIFT.

Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.--JEAN PAUL.

'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit. --SWIFT.

Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise, The breath is gone whereof this praise is made. --SHAKESPEARE.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Who flatters is of all mankind the lowest, Save he who courts the flattery. --HANNAH MORE.

Meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips.--PROVERBS 20:19.

Men are like stone jugs,--you may lug them where you like by the ears. --DR. JOHNSON.

Commend a fool for his wit and a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms.--FIELDING.

FLOWERS.--Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.--BEECHER.

In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares: Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers On its leaves a mystic language bears. --PERCIVAL.

How the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the tomb.--MRS. L.M. CHILD.

There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.--SOUTH.

Flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them.--H.N. HUDSON.

And with childlike credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and better land. --LONGFELLOW.

FOOLS.--He who provides for this life, but takes no care for eternity, is wise for a moment, but a fool forever.--TILLOTSON.

The wise man has his follies no less than the fool; but it has been said that herein lies the difference,--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but are hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.--COLTON.

People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.--LADY MONTAGU.

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.--POPE.

Surely he is not a fool that hath unwise thoughts, but he that utters them.--BISHOP HALL.

It would be easier to endow a fool with intellect than to persuade him that he had none.--BABINET.

At thirty man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty, chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve, Resolves--and re-resolves; then dies the same. --YOUNG.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own.--CICERO.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.--POPE.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.--COLTON.

Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.--HELPS.

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.--CHAPMAN.

None but a fool is always right.--HARE.

People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them.--HALIBURTON.

FORBEARANCE.--Learn from Jesus to love and to forgive. Let the blood of Jesus, which implores pardon for you in heaven, obtain it from you for your brethren here upon earth.--VALPY.

The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear; And something every day they live To pity, and perhaps forgive. --COWPER.

It is a noble and a great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top.--SOUTH.

FORGIVENESS.--If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.--MATTHEW 6:14.

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.--LORD HERBERT.

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.--BAILEY.

The brave only know how to forgive.--STERNE.

The gospel comes to the sinner at once with nothing short of complete forgiveness as the starting-point of all his efforts to be holy. It does not say, "Go and sin no more, and I will not condemn thee." It says at once, "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more."--HORATIUS BONAR.

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.--LYTTON.

Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.--COWPER.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.--THE LORD'S PRAYER.

God's way of forgiving is thorough and hearty,--both to forgive and to forget; and if thine be not so, thou hast no portion of His.--LEIGHTON.

FORTITUDE.--The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is the calmest in storms, and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is the most unfaltering.--CHANNING.