Various - Many Thoughts of Many Minds

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Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop
Not to outsport discretion.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to win all the
duties of life.--ADDISON.

Great ability without discretion comes almost invariably to a tragic
end.--GAMBETTA.

DISSIMULATION.--Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature,
is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or
not, artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.
--LA BRUYERE.

DRESS.--In the matter of dress people should always keep below their
ability.--MONTESQUIEU.

Those who are incapable of shining but by dress would do well to
consider, that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out
much to their disadvantage.--SHENSTONE.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin.--MATTHEW 6:28.

A majority of women seem to consider themselves sent into the world
for the sole purpose of displaying dry goods; and it is only when
acting the part of an animated milliner's block that they feel they
are performing their appropriate mission.--ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON.

No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women.--SIR
WALTER RALEIGH.

Those who think that in order to dress well it is necessary to dress
extravagantly or grandly make a great mistake. Nothing so well becomes
true feminine beauty as simplicity.--GEORGE D. PRENTICE.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy;
rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man.--SHAKESPEARE.

No real happiness is found
In trailing purple o'er the ground.
--PARNELL.

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a
little time to perfect her toilet.--CHAMFORT.

Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is
plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best
invidious; and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by
their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit
more easy.--SHENSTONE.

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.

As soon as a woman begins to dress "loud," her manners and
conversation partake of the same element.--HALIBURTON.

Dress has a moral effect on the conduct of mankind. Let any gentleman
find himself with dirty boots, old surtout, soiled neckcloth and a
general negligence of dress, he will in all probability find a
corresponding disposition by negligence of _address_.--SIR JONAH
BARRINGTON.

We sacrifice to dress, till household joys
And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder clean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost and woe,
Where peace and hospitality might reign.

Dress changes the manners.--VOLTAIRE.

DRINK.--Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may
follow strong drink.--ISAIAH 5:11.

All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils
health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is
quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and mad. He that is drunk
is not a man, because he is, for so long, void of reason that
distinguishes a man from a beast.--WILLIAM PENN.

Some of the domestic evils of drunkenness are houses without windows,
gardens without fences, fields without tillage, barns without roofs,
children without clothing, principles, morals or manners.--FRANKLIN.

Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory--of
a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it
breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting
intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.--COLTON.

Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.--DOUGLAS JERROLD.

O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by,
let us call thee--devil! * * * O, that men should put an enemy to
their mouths to steal away their brains; that we should, with joy,
revel, pleasure and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
--SHAKESPEARE.

Every inordinate cup is unbless'd, and the ingredient is a devil.
--SHAKESPEARE.

It were better for a man to be subject to any vice, than to
drunkenness: for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a
drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness.--SIR WALTER
RALEIGH.

Man has evil as well as good qualities peculiar to himself.
Drunkenness places him as much below the level of the brutes as reason
elevates him above them.--SIR G. SINCLAIR.

Of all vices take heed of drunkenness; other vices are but fruits of
disordered affections--this disorders, nay, banishes reason; other
vices but impair the soul--this demolishes her two chief faculties,
the understanding and the will; other vices make their own way--this
makes way for all vices; he that is a drunkard is qualified for all
vice.--QUARLES.

There is scarcely a crime before me that is not directly or indirectly
caused by strong drink.--JUDGE COLERIDGE.

Beware of drunkenness, lest all good men beware of thee; where
drunkenness reigns, there reason is an exile, virtue a stranger, God
an enemy; blasphemy is wit, oaths are rhetoric, and secrets are
proclamations.--QUARLES.

DUTY.--Duty grows everywhere, like children, like grass.--EMERSON.

Perish discretion when it interferes with duty.--HANNAH MORE.

The people of this country have shown by the highest proofs human
nature can give, that wherever the path of duty and honor may lead,
however steep and rugged it may be, they are ready to walk in
it.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our duty and find in
it our pleasure.--MME. DE MOTTEVILLE.

Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and
prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept
well to heart: "Do the duty which lies nearest to thee," which thou
knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become
clearer.--CARLYLE.

Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of
man.--ECCLESIASTES 12:13.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies
the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic
about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.--SAMUEL SMILES.

Who escapes a duty avoids a gain.--THEODORE PARKER.

Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, the market, the street,
the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in
the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for
mankind depended upon our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do
that the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which
achieves the welfare of the world.--THEODORE PARKER.

In every profession the daily and common duties are the most useful.

Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You
have time and eternity to rejoice in.--THEODORE PARKER.

Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world
may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and
consequently should not be any part of your concern.--EPICTETUS.

It is thy duty oftentimes to do what thou wouldst not; thy duty, too,
to leave undone that thou wouldst do.--THOMAS A KEMPIS.

There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from but the
consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It
is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of
the morning, and dwell in the utmost parts of the seas, duty
performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or
our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as
in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their
power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life,
will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable
solemnity which lies yet further onward we shall still find ourselves
surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has
been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace
to perform it.--WEBSTER.

EARLY RISING.--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.

Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk?
--THOMSON.

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 ten additional years
to a man's life.--DODDRIDGE.

I would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed, and the walls of
your chamber: "If you do not rise early, you can make progress in
nothing."--CHATHAM.

When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.--WELLINGTON.

Few ever lived to a great age, and fewer still ever became
distinguished, who were not in the habit of early rising.--DR. JOHN TODD.

Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind and active
habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.--FLINT.

Thus we improve the pleasures of the day,
While tasteless mortals sleep their time away.
--MRS. CENTLIVRE.

No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may,
if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty;--let him
rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the
most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of
acquaintance only,--those by whom something may be got, and those from
whom something may be learnt.--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.

EARNESTNESS.--Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really
great things. He may be the cleverest of men, he may be brilliant,
entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soul-moving picture
was ever painted that had not in it the depth of shadow.--PETER BAYNE.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and
done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give no
peace.--EMERSON.

Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the
faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance,
overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope,
makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in
overcoming them.--BOVEE.

There is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent and sincere
earnestness.--DICKENS.

He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply
himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the
idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like
insanity.--JOHN FOSTER.

ECONOMY.--Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and
get dollars in return.--H.W. SHAW.

Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as
to spend it well.--SPURGEON.

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions and spend one
penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy hide-bound pocket soon
begin to thrive and will never again cry with the empty belly-ache;
neither will creditors insult thee, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite,
nor nakedness freeze thee.--FRANKLIN.

He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would
not, have too little to spend.--FELTHAM.

Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty and of ease, and
the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
--DR. JOHNSON.

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.
--FRANKLIN.

If you know how to spend less than you get you have the philosopher's
stone.--FRANKLIN.

Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a
king and the hand of a wise economist.--JOUBERT.

A penny saved is two pence clear,
A pin a day's a groat a year.
--FRANKLIN.

Those individuals who save money are better workmen; if they do not
the work better, they behave better and are more respectable; and I
would sooner have in my trade a hundred men who save money than two
hundred who would spend every shilling they get. In proportion as
individuals save a little money their morals are much better; they
husband that little, and there is a superior tone given to their
morals, and they behave better for knowing that they have a little
stake in society.

No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor
whose incomings exceed his outgoings.--HALIBURTON.

EDUCATION.--The true order of learning should be first, what is
necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To
reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the
edifice.--MRS. SIGOURNEY.

A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, if he
understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask,
or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions,--whether he
is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just and benevolent.
--LADY HERVEY.

The world is only saved by the breath of the school children.--THE
TALMUD.

It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France,
since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but
she is also building schoolhouses.--BEECHER.

A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly,
skilfully and magnanimously all the offices of peace and war.--MILTON.

Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term
of education. The feelings are to be disciplined, the passions are to
be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound
religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated
under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.--WEBSTER.

It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion,
that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the
efficacy of mechanics' institutes, or even of primary and elementary
schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry so
long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.

Unless your cask is perfectly clean, whatever you pour into it turns
sour.--HORACE.

Prussia is great because her people are intelligent. They know the
alphabet. The alphabet is conquering the world.--G.W. CURTIS.

Next in importance to freedom and justice, is popular education,
without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently
maintained.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.--GASCOIGNE.

On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation
and perpetuation of our free institutions.--WEBSTER.

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within
the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of
character. Let parents bear this ever in mind.--HOSEA BALLOU.

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has
been through him; if he is a walking university.--CHAPIN.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than
what to think,--rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to
think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of
other men.--BEATTIE.

Into what boundless life does education admit us. Every truth gained
through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being--positively
enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot
weaken or destroy.--CHAPIN.

All that a university or final highest school can do for us is still
but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to
read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet
and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get
knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It
depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done
their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection
of books.--CARLYLE.

If you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be
corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to
which their first education disposed them--you first make thieves and
then punish them.--SIR THOMAS MORE.

'Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
--POPE.

EGOTISM.--When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without
loss; his accusations of himself are always believed, his praises
never.--MONTAIGNE.

Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will
take it upon your word.--CHESTERFIELD.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not to talk of ourselves
at all.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

It is never permissible to say, I say.--MADAME NECKER.

The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.
--ZIMMERMANN.

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words
sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.--HARE.

The more anyone speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another
talked of.--LAVATER.

Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of
yourself.--PASCAL.

He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others
is much mistaken; but he who thinks that others cannot do without him
is still more mistaken.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

ELOQUENCE.--Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this
advantage over those that are read from a manuscript; every burst of
eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they
may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect
of the sudden inspiration of talent.--COLTON.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing
but what is necessary.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be
brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will
toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but
they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and
in the occasion.--WEBSTER.

There is as much eloquence in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in
the air of a speaker, as in his choice of words.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

EMPLOYMENT.--Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the
busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms
their main pursuit.--BLAIR.

The rust rots the steel which use preserves.--LYTTON.

Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.--SENECA.

The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.
--JEREMY TAYLOR.

Employment, which Galen calls "nature's physician," is so essential to
human happiness, that indolence is justly considered as the mother of
misery.--BURTON.

ENTHUSIASM.--Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from
the human to the divine.--EMERSON.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
--BEACONSFIELD.

Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever
we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or
chilling a single earnest sentiment.--TUCKERMAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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