Various - Many Thoughts of Many Minds
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Various >> Many Thoughts of Many Minds
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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 A 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.
Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to
do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a
river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.--JEREMY COLLIER.
True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man's self, and
an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets or danger lies in
his way.--LOCKE.
FORTUNE.--It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events,
because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence.--DRYDEN.
The prudent man really frames his own fortunes for himself.--PLAUTUS.
Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she
never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.--POPE.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon them.--SHAKESPEARE.
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.--SALLUST.
The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; and the
good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.--SAADI.
Fortune favors the bold.--CICERO.
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.--MOLIERE.
FREEDOM.--I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among
freemen.--SWIFT.
There are two freedoms,--the false, where a man is free to do what he
likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.--CHARLES
KINGSLEY.
The cause of freedom is the cause of God.--BOWLES.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
--RICHARD LOVELACE.
And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
--ROBERT TREAT PAINE.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident
proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use
their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who
resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.--MACAULAY.
To have freedom is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to
enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to
possess.--RAHEL.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light.
--JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
Freedom is not caprice but room to enlarge.--C.A. BARTOL.
Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter"
intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that, wheresoever,
whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will
die freemen.--JOSIAH QUINCY.
Who then is free?--the wise, who well maintains
An empire o'er himself; whom neither chains,
Nor want, nor death, with slavish fear inspire;
Who boldly answers to his warm desire;
Who can ambition's vainest gifts despise;
Firm in himself, who on himself relies;
Polish'd and round, who runs his proper course,
And breaks misfortune with superior force.
--HORACE.
The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to
a people's energy, intellect, and virtues.--CHANNING.
He was the freeman whom the truth made free;
Who first of all, the bands of Satan broke;
Who broke the bands of sin, and for his soul,
In spite of fools consulted seriously.
--POLLOCK.
FRIENDSHIP.--Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the
usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.--CICERO.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
--COWPER.
He is a friend indeed who proves himself a friend in need.--PLAUTUS.
Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not.--PROVERBS 27:10.
To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.--VAUGHAN.
There is no man so friendless but that he can find a friend sincere
enough to tell him disagreeable truths.--LYTTON.
A friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful;
for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one.
--ADDISON.
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that
actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of
friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very
far from being the surest marks of it.--GEORGE WASHINGTON.
No friend's a friend till he shall prove a friend.--BEAUMONT AND
FLETCHER.
The qualities of your friends will be those of your enemies,--cold
friends, cold enemies; half friends, half enemies; fervid enemies,
warm friends.--LAVATER.
Purchase no friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give such will
cease to love.--FULLER.
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend
worth dying for.--HENRY HOME.
Real friendship is a slow grower, and never thrives unless engrafted
upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.--CHESTERFIELD.
There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of
friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them
therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for
gain; but make election rather of thy betters, than thy
inferiors.--SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
'Tis thus that on the choice of friends
Our good or evil name depends.
--GAY.
We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends;
this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.
--DR. JOHNSON.
An act, by which we make one friend and one enemy, is a losing game;
because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude.--COLTON.
That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end.
--QUARLES.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in continue firm
and constant.--SOCRATES.
We cannot expect the deepest friendship unless we are willing to pay
the price, a self-sacrificing love.--PELOUBET.
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