Page images
PDF
EPUB

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full of knowledge in respect to what is going on in a State or community than the editorial columns are.

64

ADVICE

Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth
Pulpit. The Press.

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.

65 Amiel Journal, Dec. 29, 1871. (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Translator.)

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel; for in other confidences men commit the parts of life, their lands, their goods, their children, their credit, some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellors they commit the whole; by how much the more they are obliged to all faith and integrity.

66

Bacon: Essays. Of Counsel. Good advice is one of those injuries which a good man ought, if possible, to forgive, but at all events to forget at

once.

67

Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith) : The Tin
Trumpet. Advice.

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

68

Colton: Lacon.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself; you will never err if you listen to your own suggestions.

69

Cicero: Ep. ii. 7.

I do not like giving advice, because it is an unnecessary responsibility under any circumstances.

70

Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Speech,
Aylesbury, Sept. 21, 1865.

They that will not be counselled cannot be helped.
71
Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac.

We may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
72

Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us except the very thing we wish them to do. There is one thing In particular they are always disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to take, namely, advice.

Hazlitt: Characteristics.

No. 88.

73 The advice that is wanted is generally unwelcome, and that which is not wanted is evidently impertinent.

74

Johnson: Letters to and from the Late Samuel
Johnson. From Original MS. by Hester
Lynch Piozzi, London, 1788. II. 139. (George
Birkbeck Hill, Editor.)

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of supe riority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious.

75

Johnson: Rambler. No. 87.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

76

Johnson: Rambler. No. 87. We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit

by it. 77

La Rochefoucauld: Reflections. No. 97. He who gives advice to a self-conceited man stands himself in need of counsel from another.

78

Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 8.
in Life. No. 27.

Rules for Contact

He who listens not to advice, studies to hear apprehension. When advice gains not admission into the ear, if they repre hend you, be silent.

79

Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 8. Rules for Conduct in
Life. No. 48.

When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give re mine

again.

80

Shakespeare: King Lear. Act ii. Sc. 4.

Vanbrugh: Esop. Act iii. Sc. 1.

A word to the wise is enough.

81

AFFECTATION

Affectation is as necessary to the mind, as dress is to the

[blocks in formation]

Our affections are our life. We live by these. They supply our warmth.

84 Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. "God bless you" is the old-fashioned summing-up of sincere affection, without the least smirk of studied civility. 85 George Eliot: Life of George Eliot, by J. W. Cross. Ch. 11. Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, June 19, 1861. Let the foundation of thy affection be virtue, then make the building as rich and as glorious as thou canst. If the foundation be beauty or wealth, and the building virtue, the foundation is too weak for the building, and it will fall. Happy is he the palace of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honor.

86

Quarles: Enchiridion. Cent. II. No. 94,

AFTERNOON.

In the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

87

Shakespeare: Love's Labor's Lost. Act v. Sc. 1.

AGE - see Character, Old Age, Tears.

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

is a matter of feeling, not of years.
George William Curtis: Prue and I. VI. Tit-
bottom's Spectacles.

There are three supreme agonies in life: the agony of jealousy, the agony of fearing you have mistaken your talents, and the agony of ennui.

89 AMBITION

B. R. Haydon: Table Talk.

see Avarice, Experience, Fame. Ambition alone acquires strength from gratification, and, after having gained one object, still sees another rise before it to which it as eagerly pushes on; and the dominion which it usurps over the mind is capable of enduring from youth to extreme age.

90 Joanna Baillie: Plays on the Passions. Preface. To the Reader.

Ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.

91

Burke: Letters on a Regicide Peace. Letter iii. 1797. It has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is when we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other.

92

Burke: On the Sublime and the Beautiful. That exorbitant appetite and desire of honor, which we commonly call ambition; love of money, which is covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain; self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of vainglory or applause, love of study in excess; love of women (which will require a just volume of itself), of the other I will briefly speak, and in their order. Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honor, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one defines it a pleasant poison; Ambrose, a canker of the soul, an hidden plague; Bernard, a secret poison, the father of livor, and mother of hypocrisy, the moth of holiness, and cause of madness, crucifying and disquieting all that it takes hold of."

93

66

66

[ocr errors]

Burton Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. i. Sect. 2
Mem. 3, Subs. 11.

All true ambition and aspiration are without comparisons. Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts.

94

Ambition has no rest.

95

Bulwer-Lytton: Richelieu. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Ambition is often overtaken by calamity, because it is not aware of its pursuer, and never looks behind.

96

Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith): The Tin
Trumpet. Ambition.

In men of the highest character and noblest genius there generally exists insatiable desire of honor, command, power, and glory.

Cicero: Offices. Bk. I. 8.

97 Ambition is in fact the avarice of power, and happiness herself is soon sacrificed to that very lust of dominion, which was first encouraged only as the best mode of obtaining it. 98 Colton: Lacon.

Hi ch your wagon to a star.

99 Emerson Essay on Civilization. Society and Solitude. Ambition scarce ever produces any evil but when it reigns in cruel and savage bosoms. 100

Fielding: Amelia. Bk. vi. Ch. 6. Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us; its appetite grows keener by indul gence, and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.

101

Benjamin Franklin: On True Happiness. Penn sylvania Gazette, Nov. 20, 1735.

Any attempt to lower a man's reputation in that one point where he is ambitious to be distinguished is never forgotten or forgiven.

102

B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. Ambition is of a higher and more heroic strain than avarice. Its objects are nobler, and the means by which it attains its ends less mechanical.

103

Hazlitt: Table Talk. Second Series. Pt. i. Essay x. On Thought and Action. Ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportioned to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy.

[ocr errors]

104 George S. Hillard: Eulogy on the Life and Services of Daniel Webster. Faneuil Hall, Boston, Nov. 30, 1852. Every man who can be a first-rate something as every man can be who is a man at all has no right to be a fifthrate something; for a fifth-rate something is no better than a first-rate nothing.

[ocr errors]

105 J. G. Holland: Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects. I. Self-Help.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

106 Heine: Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos. From "Lutetia." Men's ambition is generally proportioned to their capacity. Providence seldom sends any into the world with an inclination to attempt great things who have not abilities likewise to perform them.

107 Johnson: Works. VI. 275. (Oxford Edition, 1825.) A purchased slave has but one master; an ambitious man must be a slave to all who may conduce to his aggrandize

ment.

108 La Bruyère: Characters. Of the Court. (Rowe,

Translator.)

The wise man is cured of ambition by ambition.

109

La Bruyère: Characters.

Of Personal Merit. (Rowe, Translator.)

Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: the rock and the herbage are of one substance to her.

110 Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Tiberius and Vipsania.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked.

111

Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.

Ambition is indeed the most inconsiderate of passions, none of which are considerate; for the ambitious man, by the weakest inconsistency, proud as he may be of his faculties, and impatient as he may be to display them, prefers the opinion of the ignorant to his own. He would be what others can make him, and not what he could make himself without them. Nothing, in fact, is consistent and unambiguous but virtue.

112 Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Callisthenes.

Aristoteles and

The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object. 113

La Rochefoucauld: Reflections. No. 91. What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interest.

114 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections. No. 246. Honors and public favors sometimes offer themselves the more readily to those who have no ambition for them. Livy: The History of Rome. (Baker, Translator.)

115

Bk. iv. Ch. 57.

Laboring toward distant aims sets the mind in a higher key, and puts us at our best.

116 Parkhurst: Sermons.

I. The Pattern in the Mount.

« PreviousContinue »