AMBITION. 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, 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. Vipsania. Tiberius and Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked. 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 He would be what opinion of the ignorant to his own. 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. Liry: The History of Rome. Bk. iv. Ch. 57. (Baker, Translator.) 115 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. A mind free from ambition is a main help to political gentleness. Ambition, on the contrary, is hard-hearted, and the greatest fomenter of envy. 117 Plutarch: Lives. Aristides and Marcus Cato. Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. 118 Quintilian: Education of an Orator. Bk. i. Ch. 2, Sec. 22. (Watson, Translator.) It is not position, but mind, that I want. 119 Mme. Roland: To Her Father when rejecting a Suitor. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. 120 Shakespeare: Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 2. The poor make themselves poorer as apes of the rich, and the merely rich carry themselves like princes. 121 Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur. Bk. iv. Ch. 11. AMERICA -see Freedom, Government, Great Britain, Liberty, Newspapers, Patriotism, Philistinism, Public Opinion In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, or goes to an American play, or looks at an American picture or statue ? 122 Sydney Smith: Review on Seybert's Annals of the United States. America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind—that portion which in Europe is called the laboring, or lower, class to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before, to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank. 123 Daniel Webster: The Bunker Hill Monument, AMIABILITY. Amiableness is the object of love, the scope and end is to obtain it, for whose sake we love, and which our mind covets to enjoy. 124 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. iii. Sec. i. AMITY. Mem. 1, Subs. 2. With him who knocks at the door of peace, seek not hostility. 125 Rules for Conduct Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 8. AMUSEMENT · -see Reading, Play. The city... has May games, feasts, wakes and merry meetings to solace themselves. Let them freely feast, sing, and dance, have their puppet plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, bag-pipes, etc., play at ball, and barley brakes. 126 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. ii. Sec. 2, Mem. 4. Amusement to an observing mind is study. 127 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Contarini Fleming. Pt. i. Ch. 23. Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, painting and music come in for a share. 128 Goldsmith: The Traveller. Dedication. The moment a man finds a contradiction in himself between his amusements and his humanity, it is a signal that he should give them up. 129 Leigh Hunt: Table Talk. Sporting. I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice. 130 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. II. 169. (George Birkbeck Hill, Editor, 1887.) ANCESTRY-see Fame, Merit. A man who has ancestors is like a representative of the past. 131 Bulwer-Lytton: The Lady of Lyons. Act ii. Sc. 1. Wisdom of our ancestors. 132 Burke: Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill. 1793. Conceal not the meanness of thy family, nor think it disgraceful to be descended from peasants; for when it is seen that thou art not thyself ashamed, none will endeavor to make thee so. 133 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Ch. 43. (Jarvis, Translator.) This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded in the tenderness with which the child regards the father, and in the romance that time sheds upon history. 134 George William Curtis: Prue and I. VI. Family Portraits. Being convinced that, for a person who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to exhibit himself as held in honor, not on his own account, but for the renown of his forefathers; for hereditary honor is to descendants a treasure honorable and magnificent. 135 Plato: Menexenus. Sec. 19. (Burges, ANCESTRY-ANGER.. We come into the world with the mark of our descent, and with our characters about us. 136 Le Sage: Gil Blas. Bk. x. Ch. 10. (Smollett, Reason, indeed, will soon inform us that our estimation of birth is arbitrary and capricious, and that dead ancestors can have no influence but upon imagination. 137 Johnson: The Adventurer. No. 111. Proud men are very much mistaken. Their ancestors have left all things which are in their power to them, riches, images, the noble recollection of themselves; they have not left their virtue, nor were they able: it alone can neither be presented as a gift, nor received. 138 Sallust: The Jugurthine War. Sec. 85. (Ramage, Translator.) The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. 139 Sallust: The Jugurthine War. Sec. 85. (Ramage, All history shows the power of blood over circumstances as much as agriculture shows the power of the seeds over the soils. 140 E. P. Whipple: Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics. American Principles. ANGER -see Cruelty, Hatred. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not. 141 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Fire hath its force abated by water, not by wind; and anger must be allayed by cold words, and not by blustering threats. 142 Anne Bradstreet: Printed in 1867 from a MS. left by the Author. Anger helps complexion, saves paint. 143 Act i. Sc. 9. Congreve: The Way of the World. Anger is an expensive luxury in which only men of a certain income can indulge. 144 George William Curtis: Prue and I. VI. Titbottom's Spectacles. Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. 145 Fuller: The Holy and Profane States. The Holy Anger is a fierce and sudden flame, which may be kindled in the noblest breasts; but in these the slow droppings of an unforgiving temper never take the shape and consistency of enduring hatred. 146 George S. Hillard: Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan. Ch. 13. The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of Love. 147 Landor: Miscellaneous. LXVI. Anger may repast with thee for an hour, but not repose for a night; the continuance of anger is hatred, the continuance of hatred turns malice. That anger is not warrantable which hath seen two suns. 148 Quarles: Enchiridion. Cent. II. No. 60. Beware of him that is slow to anger; anger, when it is long in coming, is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. 149 Quarles Enchiridion. Cent. II. No. 67. Anger, when excessive, createth terror. Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 8. in Life. No. 18. 150 Rules for Conduct The greatest remedy for anger is delay. 151 Seneca: Of Anger. Bk. iv. Ch. 29. (Stewart, Trans.) ANGLING We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;" and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling. 152 Izaak Walton: The Complete Angler. Pt. i. Ch. 5. ANTICIPATION. Hope deceives, enjoyment undeceives. 153 ANTIPATHY Joseph Roux: Meditations of a Parish Priest. There is one species of terror which those who are unwilling to suffer the reproach of cowardice have wisely dignified with the name of antipathy. 154 Johnson: Rambler. No. 126. ANTIQUARIAN -see Antiquity. A mere antiquarian is a rugged being. 155 ANTIQUITY Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. III. 278. (George Birkbeck Hill, Editor, 1887.) see Antiquarian. Nothing is old but the mind. 156 Emerson: Letters and Social Aims. Progress of Culture. They who make research into antiquity, may be said to pass often through many dark lobbies and dusky places before they come to the Aula lucis, the great hall of light; they must repair to old archives, and peruse many moulded and moth-eaten records, and so bring light, as it were, out of darkness, to inform the present world what the former did, and make us see truth through our ancestors' eyes. 157 James Howell: Londonopolis. |