DEEDS. Our deeds are like children born to us: they live and act apart from our own will. Children may be strangled, but deeds never. He that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night. 1134 DELIGHT. Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight. 1135 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. V. Habits. The last excessive feelings of delight are always grave. DEMOCRACY -see Freedom, Government, Politicians. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself. 1137 Coleridge: Table Talk, Sept. 19, 1830. He was a Democrat in the best sense, earnestly desiring the elevation of the people to a higher plane of intellectual and moral life, as well as their political emancipation. 1138 Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen. Henri Perreyve. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy. Neither the inclination nor the knowledge will suffice alone; and it is difficult to find them together. Pure democracy, and pure democracy alone, satisfies the former condition of this great problem. 1139 Macaulay Essays. On Mitford's History of Greece. (Knight's Quarterly Magazine, November, 1824.) A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality. 1140 Montesquieu: Spirit of Laws. Bk. v. Ch. 3. (Nugent, Translator.) There is still another inconveniency in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces. 1141 1142 Montesquieu: Spirit of Laws. Bk. x. Ch. 7. Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them. DEMONSTRATION. Man meets not man, soul speaks not to soul, apart from symbolism of some kind. 1143 DESIRE. Hugh R. Haweis: Speech in Season. Bk. i. He who desires naught will always be free. Ch. 4. Lefebvre-Laboulaye: Abdallah. It is not wishing and desiring to be saved will bring men to heaven: hell's mouth is full of good wishes. 1145 Thomas Shepard: The Sincere Convert. 1655. DESPAIR. There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. 1146 George Eliot: Adam Bede. Ch. 31. DESPOT- A despot has always some good moments. 1147 Voltaire: A Philosophical Dictionary. Tyranny. DESPOTISM see Government, Imagination. Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of Freedom. 1148 Landor: Imaginary Conversations. General Lacy and Cura Merino. Despotism is often the effort of nature to cure herself from a worse disease. 1149 Robert Lord Lytton: Speeches of Edward Lord Lytton. Prefatory Memoir. DESTINY. "It is destiny," phrase of the weak human heart; dark apology for every error. The strong and the virtuous admit no destiny. On earth, guides conscience; in heaven, watches God. And Destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one, to dethrone the other. 1150 Bulwer-Lytton: Last of the Barons. Bk. x. Ch. 6. Destiny bears us to our lot, and destiny is perhaps our own will. 1151 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Contarini Destiny is our will, and our will is nature. 1152 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Contarini Fleming. Pt. v. Ch. 18. According to fates and destinies, and such odd sayings, the sisters three, and such branches of learning. 1153 Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice. Alas! we are the sport of destiny. DEVELOPMENT. Thackeray: Barry Lyndon. Ch. 3. We make nothing: we only form and discover what is already there, but which without our assistance cannot release itself from shapeless chaos. 1155 Auerbach: On the Heights. (Bennett, Translator.) DEVIL, The War. see Gossip, Lying, Prayer, Truthfulness, The meanest thing in the world is - the Devil. 1156 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The Devil has his elect. 1157 Carlyle Thomas Carlyle, First Forty Years, by Froude. Vol. ii. Ch. 4. Journal, Aug. 5, 1829. The Devil is not, indeed, perfectly humorous, but that is only because he is the extreme of all humor. 1158 Coleridge: Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary. Fragments and Notes. Sec. 3. Wit and Humor. Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs. 1159 B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the Devil, where he is known. 1160 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. A Journal of a Tar- to the Hebrides, Aug. 18, 1773. If the Devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them. 1161 Lowell: Among my Books. New England Two For, where God built a church there the Devil would also build a chapel. They imitated the Jews also in this, namely, that as the Most Holiest was dark, and had no light, even so and after the same manner did they make their shrines dark where the Devil made answer. Thus is the Devil ever God's ape. 1162 Martin Luther: Table Talk. Of God's Works. He must needs go that the Devil drives. 1163 Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well. No man means evil but the Devil, and we shall know him by his horns. 1164 Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor. What, man! defy the Devil? Consider, he's an enemy to mankind. 1165 Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4. The Devil shall have his bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs, he will give the Devil his due. 1166 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. i. Act i. Sc. 2. DEVOTION. Some persons are so devotional they have not one bit of true religion in them. B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. 1167 DIALOGUES. Dialogues of the unborn, like dialogues of the dead, or between two young children. 1168 Hawthorne: American Note-Books, Jan. 4, 1839. DIFFICULTIES. There is such a choice of difficulties that I am myself at a loss how to determine. 1169 DIGNITY. James Wolfe: Despatch to Pitt, Sept. 2, 1759. There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. Washington Irving: The Sketch-Book. The Country Church. 1170 DILEMMA. Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charyb dis, your mother. 1171 DILIGENCE. Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice. Diligence is the mother of good fortune. 1172 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Ch. 43. (Jarvis, Translator.) Diligence which, as it avails in all things, is also of the utmost moment in pleading causes. Diligence is to be particularly cultivated by us; it is to be constantly exerted; it is capable of effecting almost everything. 1173 Cicero: On Oratory and Orators. (Yonge, Translator.) Bk. ii. Ch. 35. Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry. Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep. 1174 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence. Act i. Sc. 4. 1175 1176 DIPLOMACY. Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest. 1177 Richter: Titan, Cycle 26. (Brooks, Translator.) DISAPPOINTMENT see Success. Welcome, Disappointment! Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the hand of a friend. Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice of a friend. Oh, there is something sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better than success! 1178 Longfellow: Hyperion. Bk. iv. Ch. 2. Disappointment is often the salt of life. 1179 DISCIPLINE. Theodore Parker: Miscellaneous Discourses. A Sermon of the Moral Dangers Incident to Prosperity. He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity. 1180 Bacon Essays. Of Marriage and Single Life. |
