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"WITH the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton may write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index."

Rossiter Johnson: Manuscript.

"ONE must spend time in gathering knowledge to give it out richly."

Edmund Clarence Stedman: Poets of America, chap. 9.

A DICTIONARY

OF

QUOTATIONS IN PROSE.

ABILITY-see Work.

A.

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

1

Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities. 2 Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects. Education. The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a contempt for mere external show.

3

Garfield: Oration on Miss Booth. The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

4 Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ch. 68. There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability.

5

La Rochefoucauld: Reflections. No. 245.

Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race forever.

6

Ruskin: Modern Painters.

Pt. ii. Sec. i. Ch. 7.

No man is the wiser for his learning. It may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man.

7

John Selden: Table Talk. Learning.

The measure of capacity is the measure of sphere to either

man or woman.

8

ABSENCE.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith: MS.

Ab

Absence is not of matter: the body does not make it. sence quickens our love and elevates our affections. Absence is the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal beauty. Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Kosciusko

9

and Poniatowski.
1

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