Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books; how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.— Richard de Bury. The slight that can be conveyed in a glance, in a gracious smile, in a wave of the hand, is often the ne plus ultra of art. What insult is so keen, or so keenly felt, as the polite insult, which it is impossible to resent? -Julia Kavanagh. INSULT. Man gains wider dominion by his intellect than by his right arm. The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs, its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages.-Chapin. A man of intellect is lost unless he unites energy of character to intellect. When we have the lantern of Diogenes we must have his staff. Chamfort. The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one; it has no conscience. Napoleon is the readiest instance of this. If his heart had borne any proportion to his brain, he had been one of the greatest men in all history.-Lowell. God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.-Bacon. The nearer anything comes to mental joy, the purer and choicer it is. It is the observation not only of Aristotle, but of every one almost, "Some things delight merely because of their novelty"; and that surely upon this account, because the mind, which is the spring of joy, is more fixed and intense upon such things The rosebud thus pleases more than the blown rose.-Lamb. In these beings so minute, and as it were such nonentities, what wisdom is displayed, what power, what unfathomable perfection. Pliny The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it. -Hare. That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.Hosea Ballou. They who have read about everything are thought to understand everything, too, but it is not always so; reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections, - -we must chew them over again.-Channing. Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.Samuel Smiles. A man cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well-educated family.Rev. Thomas Scott. God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself, like fire, ad infinitum. Light a thousand torches at one touch, the flame remains always the same.-Joubert. The intellectual powers of man are not given merely for self; they are not intended to aid his own cunning, and craft, and intrigues, and conspiracies, and enrichment. They will do nothing for these base purposes. The instinct of a tiger, a vulture, or a fox will do better. Genius and abilities are given as lamps to the world, not to self.-Sir Egerton Brydges. It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence.-Swedenborg. INTEMPERANCE. I never drink. I cannot do it, on equal terms with others. It costs them only one If a man empties his purse into his head, no day; but me three, the first in sinning, the one can take it from him.-Franklin. second in suffering, and the third in repenting. Sterne. Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.—Shakespeare. Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine ; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright; at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.—Bible. O, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! Shakespeare. While you are in the habit of intemperance, you often drink up the value of an acre of land in a night.-Father Mathew. When the cup of any sensual pleasure is drained to the bottom, there is always poison in the dregs. Anacreon himself declares, that "the flowers swim at the top of the bowl!"— Jane Porter. Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness.—Charron. In our world, death deputes intemperance to do the work of age.-Young. No man oppresses thee, O free and independent franchiser! but does not this stupid porterpot oppress thee? No son of Adam can bid thee come or go; but this absurd pot of heavy wet, this can and does! Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this scoured dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy "liberty," thou entire blockhead!-Carlyle. He that tempts me to drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever.Jeremy Taylor. The habit of using ardent spirits, by men in office, has occasioned more injury to the public, and more trouble to me, than all other causes. And were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask, respecting a candidate for office would be, "Does he use ardent spirits?"-Jefferson. In what pagan nation was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims as are offered to this Mofoch of Christendom, Intemperance? Horace Mann. As surfeit is the father of much fast, so every scope, by the immoderate use, turns to restraint.-Shakespeare. Intemperance is a dangerous companion. It throws people off their guard; betrays them to a great many indecencies, to ruinous passions, to disadvantages in fortune; makes them discover secrets, drive foolish bargains, engage in play, and often to stagger from the tavern to the stews.-Jeremy Collier. It is not fitting that the evil produced by men should be imputed to things; let those bear the blame who make an ill use of things in themselves good.-Isocrates. Every apartment devoted to the circulation of the glass, may be regarded as a temple set apart for the performance of human sacrifices. And they ought to be fitted up like the ancient temples in Egypt, in a manner to show the real atrocity of the superstition that is carried on within their walls.-Beddoes. Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than a habit of drinking.- Walter Scott. INTENTIONS. Hell is full of good meanings and wishes.- To be always intending to lead a new life, but never to find time to set about it, this is as if a man should put off eating, and drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.-Tillotson Interest speaks all languages, and acts all parts, even that of disinterestedness itself.Rochefoucauld. Interest has the security, though not the vir tue of a principle. As the world goes, it is the surest side; for men daily leave both relations and religion to follow it.-William Penn. Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.-Rousseau. How difficult a thing it is to persuade a man to reason against his own interest, though he is convinced that equity is against him. Dr. John Trusler. When interest is at variance with conscience, any distinction to make them friends will serve the hollow-hearted.—Henry Home. Interest makes some people blind and others quick-sighted. We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. Virtues are lost in interest, as rivers are swallowed up in the sea.-J. Beaumont. The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.— Kochefoucauld. INTERFERENCE. He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.-Bible. That is the briefest and sagest of maxims which bids us to "meddle not."-Colton. INTOLERANCE. As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.-Calton. The Devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity and patience.-Lowell. Those who, having magnified into serious evils by injudicious opposition heresies in themselves insignificant, yet appeal to the magnitude of those evils to prove that their opposition was called for, act like unskilful physicians, who, when by violent remedies they have aggravated a trifling disease into a dangerous one, urge the violence of the symptoms which they themselves have produced in justification of their practice. Whately. The intolerant man is the real pedant.- Some men will not shave on Sunday, and yet they spend all the week in shaving their fellow-men; and many folks think it very wicked to black their boots on Sunday morning, yet they do not hesitate to black their neighbor's reputation on week-days.-Beecher. Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpe.s of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves.-Bacon. Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes.-Tupper. The great inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as c'ad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil.-Isaac Taylor. Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to It were better to be of no church, than to be that which was old, condensation to that which bitter for any.-William Penn. was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite. It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fé, any crusade, among the Pagans.-Sterne. Colton. Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment; insinuating the most galling satire under the phraseology of panegyric; placing its victim naked on a bed of briers and thistles, thinly covered with rose-leaves; adorning his brow with a crown of gold, which burns into his brain; teasing and fretting, and riddling him through and through, with incessant discharges of hot shot from a masked battery; laying bare the most sensitive and shrinking nerves of his mind, and then blandly touching them with ice, or smilingly pricking them with needles.-— Whipple. ISOLATION. Eagles fly alone; they are but sheep which always herd together.-Sir P. Sidney. JEALOUSY. It is with jealousy as with the gout. When such distempers are in the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out, and that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected.-Fielding. Jealousy lives upon doubts, -it becomes madness, or ceases entirely, as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.-Rochefoucauld. Jealousy-it is a green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.-Shakespeare. Jealousy may often explain blindness. When Le Brun heard of the death of Le Sueur, he said that he felt as if a thorn had just been taken out of his foot. Bellino warns Titian that he will never succeed in painting; and Titian, crowned with fame, scowls upon the dawning honors of Tintoretto.- Willmott. O, the pain of pains is when the fair one, whom our soul is fond of, gives transport, and receives it from another.-Young. J. It is very puzzling, sometimes, to distinguish between jealousy and envy, for they often run into one another, and are blended together. The most valid distinction seems to be this, that jealousy is always personal. The envious man desires some good which another possesses; the jealous man would often be content to be without the good so that that other did not possess it.-Helps. Thou grand counterpoise for all the transports beauty can inspire.— Young. Love may exist without jealousy, although There is not so much danger in a known this is rare; but jealousy may exist without foe as a suspected friend.-Nabb. O Jealousy! thou most unnatural offspring of a too tender parent! that in excess of fond ness feeds thee, like the pelican, but with her purest blood; and in return thou tearest the bosom whence thy nurture flows.-Frowde. We may kill those of whom we are jealous, but we do not hate them.-Fielding. Jealousy is like a polished glass held to the lips when life is in doubt; if there be breath, it will catch the damp and show it.-Dryden. O, what damned minutes tells he o'er, who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves! Shakespeare. All the other passions condescend at times to accept the inexorable logic of facts; but jealousy looks facts straight in the face, ignores them utterly, and says that she knows a great deal better than they can tell her.-Helps. Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.Shakespeare. No passion more base, nor one which seeks to hide itself more than jealousy. It is ashamed of itself; if it appears, it carries its stain and disgrace on the forehead. We do not wish to acknowledge it to ourselves, it is so ignominious; but hidden and ashamed in the character, we would be confused and disconcerted if it appeared, by which we are convinced of our bad minds and debased courage.—Bossuet. love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter, no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride, as often as by affection.-Colton. There is in jealousy more of self-love than of love.-Rochefoucauld. People who are jealous, or particularly careful of their own rights and dignity, always find enough of those who do not care for either to keep them continually uncomfortable.— Barnes. |