Page images
PDF
EPUB

ANTIQUARIANISM.-I do by no means advise you to throw away your time, in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read, what blockheads wrote.-Chesterfield's Letters.

APHORISMS. The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in few words. -Johnson.

APPEARANCES.-The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all humane virtues increase and strengthen themselves, by the practice and experience of them.-Socrates.

ARGUMENT.-Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally, in books, the worst sort of reading.—Swift.

ARMIES.-Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power, for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too, by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.- Chesterfield.

ASSERTIONS.-Weigh not so much what men assert, as what they prove; remembering that truth is simple and naked, and needs not invention to apparel her comeliness.— Sir P. Sidney.

ASSOCIATES.-People will, in a great degree, and not with. out reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says, very justly, “Tell me with whom you live, and I will you who you are."

tell

ASSOCIATES.-You may depend upon it that he is a good

man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are characters decidedly bad.—Lavater.

ASSOCIATES, THEir influence. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be de stroyed. Solomon.

ASSOCIATION OF THE GOOD.- -When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.-Burke.

ATHEISM, ITS FOLLY.-What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in his understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! finite. Jeremy Taylor.

This folly is in

ATHEIST AND HYPOCRITE.-An atheist is but a mad ridiculous derider of piety; but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action: like an impudent debtor, who goes every day to talk familiarly to his creditor, without ever paying what he owes.—Pope.

ATHEIST, HIS CHARACTER.-A traveller amid the scenery of the Alps, surrounded by the sublimest demonstrations of God's power, had the hardihood to write against his name, in an album kept for visitors, " An atheist." Another who fol lowed, shocked and indignant at the inscription, wrote be neath it," If an atheist, a fool; if not, a liar!"

ATHEIST, THE.-Atheists put on a false courage and alac

rity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children, who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.-Pope.

AUTHORITY.-Nothing more impairs authority than a too frequent or indiscreet use of it. If thunder itself was to be continual, it would excite no more terror than the noise of a mill.

AUTHORSHIP.-There are three difficulties in authorship: -to write anything worth publishing-to find honest men to publish it—and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the booksellers are the kings; the critics, the knaves; the public, the pack; and the poor author, the mere table, or thing played upon. -Colton.

AUTHORS, THEIR CONVERSATION AND WRITINGS.—A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendor, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.-Johnson.

AVARICE. The avaricious man is like the barren, sandy ground of the desert, which sucks in all the rain and dews with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.-Zeno.

AVARICE.-It may be remarked, for the comfort of honest poverty, that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow only in a barren soil.-Hughes.

AVARICE, ITS EFFECT.-How vilely has he lost himself who

has become a slave to his servant, and exalts him to the dig nity of his Maker! Gold is the friend, the wife, the god of the money-monger of the world.-Penn.

AVARICE NOT SAGACITY.-Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas, a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.-Shenstone.

AVARICE THE PARENT OF VICES.-Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children; and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead; and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven, than the martyr undergoes to gain it.-Colton.

B.

BABBLING.-Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the babbler.-Steele.

BASENESS.-Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other.-Sir P. Sidney.

BASHFULNESS.-There are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove.—Mackenzie.

BEAUTY. Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing was more grateful; Aristotle affirmed, that beauty was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that 'twas a glo

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

rious gift of nature; and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a fa vor bestowed by the gods.-From the Italian.

BEAUTY AND LOVE.-Love, that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health, is short-lived, and apt to have ague fits.-Erasmus.

BEAUTIES OF RHETORIC.-Flowers of rhetoric in sermons and serious discourses are like the blue and red flowers in corn, pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.—Pope.

BEAUTIES OF STYLE.- -The writer who never deviates, who never hazards a new thought, or a new expression, though his friends may compliment him upon his sagacity, though criticism lifts her feeble voice in his praise, will seldom arrive at anf degree of perfection. The way to acquire lasting esteem, is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most repleto with both.-Goldsmith.

BEAUTY IN A WIFE. Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year! and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.-Sir W. Raleigh-to his son.

BEAUTY IN FEMALES.- -No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech.-Hughes.

BELIEF. He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed. Many gain a false credit for liberality of sentiment in religious matters, not from any tenderness they may have to the opinions or consciences of other men, but because they

« PreviousContinue »