Page images
PDF
EPUB

LIFE. He lives long that lives well; and time misspent, is not lived, but lost. Besides, God is better than his promise if he takes from him a long lease, and gives him a freehold of a better value.-Fuller.

LIFE-The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.-Shakspeare.

LIFE.-Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.-Addison.

LIFE. He that embarks in the voyage of life will always wish to advance, rather by the impulse of the wind, than the strokes of the oar; and many founder in their passage, while they lie waiting for the gale.-Johnson.

LIFE.-There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.-Zimmerman.

LIFE, HOW SHORTENED.—

If we calculate the time of life for seventy years, and take from it the time of our infancy and childhood, sleep and recreation, eating and drinking, sickness and old age, but a very little will remain for service. -Fuller.

LIFE, HOW TO ESTIMATE.-Measure not life by the hopes and enjoyments of this world, but by the preparation it makes for another; looking forward to what you shall be, rather than backward to what you have been.

LIFE IN A LARGE CITY.-The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.―Johnson.

LIFE, INFLUENCE OF ITS BREVITY. -I would have every one consider that he is, in this life, only a passenger, and that he is not to set up his rest here, but to keep an attentive eye on that state of being to which he approaches every moment, and which will be forever fixed and permanent. This single consideration would be sufficient to extinguish the bitterness of hatred, the thirst of avarice, and the cruelty of ambition. -Addison.

[ocr errors]

LIFE, ITS BREVITY.- -While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone; and death, though perhaps they receive him differently, yet treats alike the fool and the philosopher.—

Hume.

LIFE, ITS BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY.-For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.-James.

LIFE, ITS CHANGES.- -What a beautiful lesson is taught in these words of Sterne: "So quickly sometimes has the wheel turned round, that many a man has lived to enjoy the benefit of that charity which his own piety projected."

LIFE, ITS DUTIES.-This little life has its duties that are great-that are alone great, and that go up to heaven and down to hell.-Carlyle.

LIFE, ITS EMPTINESS.-Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage, may be applied to every other course of life, that

its two days of happiness are the first and the last.-John

son.

LIFE, ITS END. If we do not weigh and consider to what end this life is given us, and thereupon order and dispose it right, pretend what we will to the arithmetic, we do not, we cannot so much as number our days in the narrowest and most limited signification.-Clarendon.

LIFE, ITS END.-How great a pity that we should not feel for what end we are born into this world, till just as we are leaving it. Walsingham.

LIFE, ITS ENDEARMENTS.-He who increases the endearments of life, increases at the same time the terrors of death. -Young.

LIFE, ITS ENJOYMENT.-The ready way to the right enjoy. ment of life is, by a prospect towards another, to have but a very mean opinion of it.—Spectator.

Life, its great END.-Though our life be short and uncertain, yet it is a great deal that we may do by way of preparation for another world, if we begin and set out betimes, and be good husbands of the present opportunities. It is a great way that we may go in a short time, if we be always moving and pressing forwards. But the mischief is, many men pass fifty or sixty years in the world, and when they are just going out of it, they bethink themselves, and step back, as it were, to do something which they had all this while forgot, viz. the main business, for which they came into the world, to repent of their sins and reform their lives, and make their peace with God, and in time to prepare for eternity. This, which is forgotten and deferred to the last, ought to have been first thought of, and to have been made the great business of their whole lives.-Tillotson.

LIFE, ITS INEQUALITIES.-The things that constitute the

real inequalities of life, are four: strength, talent, riches, rank. The two former would constitute inequalities in the rudest state of nature: the two latter more properly belong to a state of society more or less civilized and refined. Perhaps the whole four are ultimately resolvable into power.Colton.

LIFE, ITS JOYS.-To complain that life has no joys while there is a single creature whom we can relieve by our bounty, assist by our counsels, or enliven by our presence, is to lament the loss of that which we possess, and is just as rational as to die of thirst with the cup in our hands.-Fitzosborne.

Life, ITS PROGRESS.-Hope writes the poetry of the boy, but memory that of the man. Man looks forward with Such is the wise provi sweetest at the brim, the

smiles, but backward with sighs. dence of God. The cup of life is flavor is impaired as we drink deeper, and the dregs are made bitter that we may not struggle when it is taken from our lips.

Life, its repetitION.—Though I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice, yet for my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days: not upon Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.—Sir T. Brown.

LIFE, ITS REPETITION.-When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself, that, were the offer made me, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask, should be the privilege of an author, to correct in a second edition, certain errors of the first.-Franklin's Life.

LIFE, ITS UNCERTAINTY SHOULD PROMPT TO DILIGENCE.— The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability

that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to waken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true that no diligence can ensure success; death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking, has at least the honor of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle though he missed the victory.-Johnson.

LIFE, ITS VANITY.-The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.— Pope.

Life, this, and THE NEXT.—What is this life, but a circulation of little mean actions? We lie down and rise again, dress and undress, feed and wax hungry, work or play, and are weary, and then we lie down again, and the circle returns. We spend the day in trifles, and when the night comes we throw ourselves into the bed of folly, amongst dreams, and broken thoughts, and wild imaginations. Our reason lies asleep by us, and we are for the time as arrant brutes as those that sleep in the stalls, or in the field. Are not the capacities of man higher than these? And ought not his ambition and expectations to be greater? Let us be adventurers for another world. It is at least a fair and noble chance; and there is nothing in this worth our thoughts or our passions. If we should be disappointed, we are still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we are eternally happy.-Burnet.

LIFE, WEARINESS OF.-They who are most weary of life, and yet are most unwilling to die, are such who have lived to no purpose; who have rather breathed than lived.—Clarendon.

LIFE, WHEN HAPPY.-Our life cannot be pronounced happy, till the last scene has closed with resignation and hope, and

« PreviousContinue »