Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar ? 431 BEHAVIOR. Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his image. Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. BELIEF -see Creeds. Being alone when one's belief is firm, is not to be alone. No iron chain, nor outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone! 435 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as a Priest. What a man does not believe can never at bottom be of true interest to him. 436 Carlyle: Letter. To John Carlyle, Dec. 24, 1833. A real Protestant is a person who has examined the evidences of religion for himself, and who accepts them because, after examination, he is satisfied of their genuineness and sufficiency. 437 Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen. Henri Perreyne. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. 438 BELLS. Milton: Areopagitica. Bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven. Charles Lamb: Elia. New Year's Eve. BENEVOLENCE-see Charity, Imposture, Riches. Disinterestedness is the divine notion of perfection; disinterested benevolence is the supreme ideal. 440 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich. 441 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Money spent upon ourselves may be a millstone about the neck; spent on others, it may give us wings like eagles. 442 Roswell D. Hitchcock: Eternal Atonement. XIV. Receiving and Giving. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive. 443 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1776. Vol. iii. Ch. 2. (Routledge edition.) To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive. 444 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. III. 48. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. Horace Mann: Lectures on Education. Lect. vi. Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man. As embodied in man's conduct, it is called the path of duty. 446 Mencius: Works. Bk. vii. Pt. ii. Ch. 16. (Legge, Trans.) Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path. 447 Mencius: Works. Bk. iv. Pt. i. Ch. 10, Sec. 2. He who wishes to be benevolent will not be rich. Mencius: Works. Bk. iii. Pt. i. Ch. 3, Sec. 5. There is something, I think, particularly beautiful and instructive in this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature, for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, it takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream. 449 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. 1, Ch. 12. BIBLE, The. The Bible is the invaluable training-book of the world. 450 Henry Ward Beecher : Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct. 451 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The word of God is a grand encourager of the supreme use of the understanding of men, both in things secular and in things spiritual and divine. 452 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The word of God tends to make large-minded, noble-minded men. 453 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Men's works have an age, like themselves, and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. This only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes. 454 Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici. Pt. i. Sec. 23. It is a plain old book, modest as nature itself, and as simple, too: a book of an unpretending work-day appearance, like the sun that warms or the bread that nourishes us. A book that looks on us as trustfully and benignantly as the old grandmother who, with tremulous lips and glasses on her nose, reads in it every day. And the name of this book is simply the Bible. 455 -- Heine: Scintillations, Excerpts, Religion, It is, indeed, justly called Holy Writ. He that has lost his God can find him again, and towards him who never knew him, it wafts the spirit and the breath of the Divine word. 456 Heine: Scintillations, Excerpts, Religion, Philosophy, etc. The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews. The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man. 458 Daniel Webster: Speech, Charlestown, Mass., June 17, 1843. The Bunker Hill Monument. BIBLIOGRAPHERS. Knowledge of books in a man of business is a torch in the hands of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and welfare. 459 Addison: The Spectator. No. 165. BIBLIOPHILISM. There is no blessing that can be given to an artisan's family more than a love of books. 460 John Bright: Speech, June 1, 1882. Opening of Birmingham Free Library. I no sooner, saith he, come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness. 461 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. ii. Sect. ii. Mem. 4. Nothing, while I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I die; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance some quiet day to lay my over-beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy. 462 Leigh Hunt: The Literary Examiner. My Books. 1823. Without the love of books the richest man is poor; but endowed with this treasure of treasures, the poorest man is rich. He has wealth which no power can diminish, riches which are always increasing, possessions which the more he scatters the more they accumulate, friends who never desert him, and pleasures which never cloy. 463 John Alfred Langford: The Praise of Books. No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and happiest of the children of men. 464 John Alfred Langford: The Praise of Books. Nineteen honest brown backs are dear to a lover of books, but they scare a mere reader, whose weaker faith must be fortified by small doses, and whose unaccustomed organs can only digest food when it has been well minced. 465 BIGOTRY. Stanley Lane-Poole: Selections from the Prose Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost. BIOGRAPHY. A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely. There is no kind of writing, which has truth and instruction for its main object, so interesting and popular, on the whole, as biography. History, in its larger sense, has to deal with masses, which, while they divide the attention by the dazzling variety of objects, from their very generality are scarcely capable of touching the heart. The great objects on which it is employed have little relation to the daily occupations with which the reader is most intimate. A nation, like a corporation, seems to have no soul, and its checkered vicissitudes may be contemplated rather with curiosity for the lessons they convey than with personal sympathy. How different are the feelings excited by the fortunes of an individual, one of the mighty mass, who in the page of history is swept along the current unnoticed and unknown. 468 William H. Prescott: Biographical and Critical Miscellanies. Sir Walter Scott. BIRDS. BIRDS-BOOKS. Birds are the world's happy children. 469 Samuel Willoughby Duffield: Essay. Apple-Tree BLESSINGS. Blessings may appear under the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments, but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figure. 470 BLUNDERERS. Addison: The Guardian. No. 117. To speak and to offend, with some people, are but one and the same thing. 471 La Bruyère: Characters. Of the Heart. BLUSHES -see Authors. Better a blush in the face than a blot in the heart. Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Bk. iii. Ch. 44. (Jarvis, Translator.) 472 I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt or illbreeding. 473 Congreve: The Way of the World. Act i. Sc. 9. Blushes are badges of imperfection. 474 BOASTING Wycherley: Love in a Wood. Act i. Sc. 1. A fellow that hath had losses; and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him. 475 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 2. BOLDNESS. Be bold, first gate. Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold, second gate. Be not too bold, third gate. 476 Inscription on the Gates of Busyrane. BOOKS see America, Authors, Bible, The, Bibliophil- Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to man- A. Bronson Alcott: Tablets. Bk. i. Pt. vi. Books. |