Chapter 5
The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it,--the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.--_George MacDonald._
The dissolution of forms is no loss in the mass of matter.--_Pliny._
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death.--_Young._
~Debt.~--He that dies pays all debts.--_Shakespeare._
Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life.--_Spurgeon._
The first step in debt is like the first step in falsehood, almost involving the necessity of proceeding in the same course, debt following debt as lie follows lie. Haydon, the painter, dated his decline from the day on which he first borrowed money.--_Samuel Smiles._
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.--_Johnson._
That swamp [of debt] which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there,--in a condition in which, spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.--_George Eliot._
Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Deceit.~--No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.--_Hawthorne._
Idiots only may be cozened twice.--_Dryden._
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.--_Fontaine._
There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.--_Chapin._
Like unto golden hooks that from the foolish fish their baits do hide.--_Spenser._
Libertines are hideous spiders that often catch pretty butterflies.--_Diderot._
~Decency.~--As beauty of body, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in that we observe all the parts with a certain elegance are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behavior which appears in our lives obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions.--_Steele._
Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.--_Tully._
~Declamation.~--Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions, or musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious; where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.--_Goldsmith._
The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.--_Colton._
~Deeds.~--A word that has been said may be unsaid: it is but air. But when a deed is done, it cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow.--_Longfellow._
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done!--_Shakespeare._
Legal deeds were invented to remind men of their promises, or to convict them of having broken them,--a stigma on the human race.--_Bruyere._
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.--_Cervantes._
We should believe only in works; words are sold for nothing everywhere.--_Rojas._
~Delay.~--We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light.--_Thoreau._
Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action, which ought to be performed! and is delayed in the execution.--_Veeshnoo Sarma._
~Democracy.~--Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.--_Carlyle._
The love of democracy is that of equality.--_Montesquieu._
~Dependence.~--The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces.--_Mrs. Stowe._
Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of other's bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.--_Dante._
How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work, neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other and bear each other's burdens.--_G. A. Sala._
We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.--_Emerson._
~Desire.~--It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.--_Franklin._
Lack of desire is the greatest riches.--_Seneca._
Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.--_Johnson._
The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.--_Cicero._
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.--_Coleridge._
Desires are the pulse of the soul.--_Manton._
~Despair.~--Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.--_Fielding._
Leaden-eyed despair.--_Keats._
In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in.--_De Witt Talmage._
He that despairs limits infinite power to finite apprehensions.--_South._
It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his helper is omnipotent.--_Jeremy Taylor._
He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model.--_South._
Juliet was a fool to kill herself, for in three months she'd have married again, and been glad to be quit of Romeo.--_Charles Buxton._
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.--_George Eliot._
~Despotism.~--It is difficult for power to avoid despotism. The possessors of rude health; the individualities cut out by a few strokes, solid for the very reason that they are all of a piece; the complete characters whose fibres have never been strained by a doubt; the minds that no questions disturb and no aspirations put out of breath,--these, the strong, are also the tyrants.--_Countess de Gasparin._
There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.--_Daniel Webster._
~Destiny.~--The scape-goat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a necessity which we set down for invincible, when we have no wish to strive against it.--_Mrs. Balfour._
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.--_George Eliot._
~Detention.~--Never hold any one by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.--_Chesterfield._
~Detraction.~--Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.--_Shakespeare._
In some unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with a _but_ of detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him suspected by their silence.--_Feltham._
~Dew.~--That same dew, which sometimes withers buds, was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes, like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.--_Shakespeare._
Earth's liquid jewelry, wrought of air.--_P. J. Bailey._
~Diet.~--Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature: but more especially we should learn to suffer, grow old, and die. Some things are salutary, and others hurtful. Eat with moderation what you know by experience agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience.--_Voltaire._
Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.--_Washington Irving._
~Difficulties.~--The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.--_Goethe._
The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. Hope is born in the long night of watching and tears. Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality.--_Chapin._
How strangely easy difficult things are!--_Charles Buxton._
~Diffidence.~--Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself. If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not, please. But with proper endeavors to please, and a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will.--_Chesterfield._
No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.--_Emerson._
~Dignity.~--It is at once the thinnest and most effective of all the coverings under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. Most of the men of dignity, who awe or bore their more genial brethren, are simply men who possess the art of passing off their insensibility for wisdom, their dullness for depth, and of concealing imbecility of intellect under haughtiness of manner.--_Whipple._
~Dirt.~--"Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.--_George Eliot._
Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold.--_Lamb._
~Disappointment.~--Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of existence are strewn with them.--_Mme. de Stael._
O world! how many hopes thou dost engulf!--_Alfred de Musset._
Thirsting for the golden fountain of the fable, from how many streams have we turned away, weary and in disgust!--_Bulwer-Lytton._
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others.--_George Eliot._
Ah! what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me.--_Richter._
~Discourtesy.~--Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several,--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.--_La Bruyere._
~Discovery.~--Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls as a golden link in the great chain of order.--_Chapin._
~Discretion.~--Be discreet in all things, and go render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any.--_Wellington._
Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his particular station of life.--_Addison._
~Dishonesty.~--So grasping is dishonesty that it is no respecter of persons: it will cheat friends as well as foes; and, were it possible, even God himself!--_Bancroft._
~Dispatch.~--Use dispatch. Remember that the world only took six days to create. Ask me for whatever you please except _time_: that is the only thing which is beyond my power.--_Napoleon._
True dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wares, and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch.--_Bacon._
~Disposition.~--A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.--_Fielding._
A good disposition is more valuable than gold; for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.--_Addison._
~Distrust.~--As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.--_Wendell Phillips._
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?--_George Eliot._
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.--_Johnson._
~Doubt.~--Remember Talleyrand's advice, "If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not--don't!" The advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Doubt is hell in the human soul.--_Gasparin._
Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul.--_J. Petit Senn._
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.--_Shakespeare._
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.--_X. Doudan._
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.--_Tennyson._
Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt.--_Victor Hugo._
~Dreams.~--Children of night, of indigestion bred.--_Churchill._
A world of the dead in the hues of life.--_Mrs. Hemans._
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.--_Milton._
Dreams always go by contraries, my dear.--_Samuel Lover._
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.--_Sir T. Browne._
The mockery of unquiet slumbers.--_Shakespeare._
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.--_Tennyson._
~Dress.~--It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.--_Rousseau._
~Duty.~--Stern daughter of the voice of God.--_Wordsworth._
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life.--_Gladstone._
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.--_Bible._
The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.--_George Eliot._
Do the duty which lies nearest to thee.--_Goethe._
Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would.--_George MacDonald._
To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads!--_Byron._
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty to God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.--_Thomas Paine._
There is not a moment without some duty.--_Cicero._
If doing what ought to be done be made the first business, and success a secondary consideration,--is not this the way to exalt virtue?--_Confucius._
The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in what is remote; the work of duty lies in what is easy, and men seek for it in what is difficult.--_Mencius._
Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.--_Dr. Vinet._
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.--_Beecher._
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; the charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers.--_Wordsworth._
Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother.--_George Eliot._
E.
~Ear.~--A side intelligencer.--_Lamb._
Eyes and ears, two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores of will and judgment.--_Shakespeare._
The wicket of the soul.--_Sir J. Davies._
The road to the heart.--_Voltaire._
~Early-rising.~--Early-rising not only gives us more life in the same number of our years, but adds likewise to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same measure of time, but increases also the measure.--_Colton._
The famous Apollonius being very early at Vespasian's gate, and finding him stirring, from thence conjectured that he was worthy to govern an empire, and said to his companion, "This man surely will be emperor, he is so early."--_Caussin._
When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.--_Wellington._
The difference between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning, for the space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to a man's life.--_Doddridge._
Whoever has tasted the breath of morning knows that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of the day are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of nature that we should enjoy and profit by them.--_Southey._
~Economy.~--Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.--_Spurgeon._
Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.--_Franklin._
I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out; but the disease is incurable.--_Shakespeare._
The back-door robs the house.--_George Herbert._
The world abhors closeness, and all but admires extravagance. Yet a slack hand shows weakness, a tight hand, strength.--_Charles Buxton._
~Education.~--Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.--_Sydney Smith._
Still I am learning.--_Motto of Michael Angelo._
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.--_Daniel Webster._
The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.--_Mme. de Stael._
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, and the hero,--the wise, the good, and the great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred and brought to light.--_Addison._
Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.--_Ben Jonson._
I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read _any_ English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.--_Johnson._
The essential difference between a good and a bad education is this, that the former draws on the child to learn by making it sweet to him; the latter drives the child to learn, by making it sour to him if he does not.--_Charles Buxton._
Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Education is all paint: it does not alter the nature of the wood that is under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them; and it is sometimes so long before you get to see under the varnish!--_Lady Hester Stanhope._
~Eloquence.~--The poetry of speech.--_Byron._
This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration, and awe; that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity.--_Goldsmith._
~Eminence.~--I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power from an obscure condition ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The Temple of Honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.--_Burke._
~Emotions.~--All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.--_Richter._
Emotion has no value in the Christian system save as it stands connected with right conduct as the cause of it. Emotion is the bud, not the flower, and never is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of personal morals.--_W. H. H. Murray._
There are three orders of emotions: those of pleasure, which refer to the senses; those of harmony, which refer to the mind; and those of happiness, which are the natural result of a union between harmony and pleasure.--_Chapone._
Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow; whether raised at a puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levelers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Employment.~--The wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life worth leading.--_Paley._
Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.--_Blair._
~Emulation.~--Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living.--_Fuseli._
~Enemies.~--It is the enemy whom we do not suspect who is the most dangerous.--_Rojas._