Page images
PDF
EPUB

dereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. -Lord Bacon.

RICHES. He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable.-Sir T. Brown.

RICHES. Agar said, "Give me neither poverty nor riches ;" and this will ever be the prayer of the wise. Our incomes should be like our shoes: if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but, if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more. True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.- Colton.

RICHES. Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them; and none worse when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.-Lord Bacon.

RICHES AND MISERY.-Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers; or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruit breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the virtue of their possessor.-Burton.

RICHES AND POVERTY.-He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.-Bruyere.

RICHES AND POVERTY.-Every man is rich or poor, according to the proportion between his desires and enjoyments. Of riches as of everything else, the hope is more than the enjoyment; while we consider them as the means to be used at some future time for the attainment of felicity,

ardor after them secures us from weariness of ourselves, but no sooner do we sit down to enjoy our acquisitions than we find them insufficient to fill up the vacuities of life. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthy without physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. Adversity has ever been considered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, particularly being free from flatterers. Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct, but as adversity leads us to think properly of our state, it is most beneficial to us.-Johnson.

RICHES AND REPUTATION.-A man who succeeds to his father's reputation, must be greater than him, to be considered as great; but he that succeeds to his father's riches, will have to encounter no such deduction. The popular opinion adds to our means, but diminishes our merits; and it is not an unsafe rule, to believe less than you hear with respect to a man's fortune, and more than you hear with respect to his fame.-Colton.

RICHES AND WIT.--He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money, may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks, may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty.-Selden.

RICHES, HOW TO BE BORNE.-If thou art rich, then show the greatness of thy fortune; or what is better, the greatness of thy soul, in the meekness of thy conversation; condescend to men of low estate; support the distressed; and patronize the neglected. Be great; but let it be in considering riches as they are, as talents committed to an earthen vessel.

Thou art but the receiver; and to be obliged and to be vain too, is but the old solecism of pride and beggary, which, though they often meet, yet ever make but an absurd society.-Sterne.

RIDICULE.—The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little minds and ungenerous tempers. A young man with this cast of mind, cuts himself off from all manner of improvement.—Addison.

RIDICULE.-I know of no principle which it is of more importance to fix in the minds of young people, than that of the most determined resistance to the encroachments of ridicule. Give not up to the world, nor to the ridicule with which the world enforces its dominions over every trifling question of manner and appearance. Learn from the earliest days to insure your principles against the perils of ridicule. If you think it right to differ from the times, and to make a stand for any valuable point of morals, do it, however rustic, however antiquated, however pedantic it may appear; do it, not for insolence, but seriously and grandly, as a man who wears a soul of his own in his bosom, and does not wait till it shall be breathed into him by the breath of fashion. Let men call you mean, if you know you are just; hypocritical, if you are honestly religious; pusillanimous, if you feel you are firm. Resistance soon converts unprincipled wit into sincere respect; and no after-time can tear from you those feelings which every man carries within him who made a noble and successful exertion in a virtuous cause.-Sidney Smith.

RIDICULE. It is said that ridicule is the test of truth; but it is never applied except when we wish to deceive ourselves —when if we cannot exclude the light, we would fain draw the curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be, that wishes to take refuge in doubt.-Landon.

[ocr errors]

RIGHT AND WRONG.- -Would you be exempt from uneasiness; do nothing you know or even suspect is wrong. Would you enjoy the purest pleasure; do everything in your power you believe is right.-Rules of Life.

RISING AND FALLING.-Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall.—Confucius.

ROMANCES. To the romance writers, and comparatively decorous dramatists of his own time, Nicolé gave the title of public poisoners.

ROMANCES AND NOVELS.-Fiction may be more instructive than real history; but the vast rout of romances and novels, as they are, do incalculable mischief. I wish we could collect all together, and make one vast fire of them. I should exult to see the smoke of them ascend, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah: the judgment would be as just.-J. Foster.

RULING PASSIONS.-I have the highest opinion of the value of a ruling passion; but if it monopolizes the whole man, it requires that the object be a very comprehensive, or a very dignified one, to save him from being ridiculous. The devoted antiquary, for instance, who is passionately in love with an old coin, or button, or nail, is ridiculous. The man who is nothing but a musician, and recognizes nothing in the whole creation but crotchets and quavers, is ridiculous. So is the nothing but verbal critic, to whom the adjustment of a few insignificant particles in some ancient author, appears a more important study than the grandest arrangements of politics or morals. Even the total devotee to the grand science of Astronomy, incurs the same misfortune. Religion and morals have a noble pre-eminence here; no man can become ridiculous by his passionate devotion to them. Even a specific direction of this passion, as in the case of Howard, will make a man sublime; specific, I say, and correctly, though

at the same time, any large plan of benevolence, must be comprehensive, so to speak, of a large quantity of morals.— J. Foster.

S.

SADNESS."Keep aloof from sadness," says an Icelandic writer of the twelfth century, " for sadness is a sickness of the soul." Life has, indeed, many ills, but the mind that views every object in its most cheering aspect, and every doubtful dispensation as replete with latent good, bears within itself a powerful and perpetual antidote. The gloomy soul aggravates misfortune, while a cheerful smile often dispels those mists that portend a storm.-Sigourney.

SAFETY, THE PATH OF.-It is one of the worst of errors, to suppose that there is any other path of safety except that of duty. Nevins.

SATIRE.-Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own ;-which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.—Swift.

SATIRE. Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of those ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine, or a rank poison--Jeffrey.

SATIRE.-Satire should not be like a saw, but a sword; it should cut, and not mangle.

SATIRES-Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.-Addison.

SATIRES. Satires and lampoons on particular people cal

« PreviousContinue »