UNCERTAINTY. U. Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean. 5575 Lowell: Among My Books. Dante. Everything is sweetened by risk. 5576 Alexander Smith: Dreamthorp. Death and Dying. UNDERSTANDING. A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth. 5577 ... Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 33. Knowing is seeing. . . . Until we ourselves see it with our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author as much as we will. 5578 John Locke: The Conduct of the Understanding. Sec. 24. Partiality. UNION, The. This glorious Union shall not perish! Precious legacy of our fathers, it shall go down honored and cherished to our children. Generations unborn shall enjoy its privileges as we have done; and if we leave them poor in all besides, we will transmit to them the boundless wealth of its blessings! 5579 Edward Everett: Orations and Speeches. Union Meeting in Fanueil Hall, Dec. 8, 1859. The Union of the States is indissoluble; the country is undivided and indivisible forever. 5580 David Dudley Field: Speeches, Arguments, and Our Federal Union: it must be preserved. 5581 Andrew Jackson: Benton's Thirty Years' View. I. 148. Toast given, Jefferson Birthday Celebration, 1830. The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise. 5582 James Madison: Letter. To Daniel Webster. Our national Constitution shall prevail; the Union, which can alone insure internal peace and external security to each State, "must and shall be preserved," cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood. 5583 George B. McClellan: Letter, July 4, 1862. To If this bill (for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State) passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation, and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation -amicably if they can, violently if they must. 5584 Josiah Quincy: Abridged Congressional Debates. Jan. 14, 1811. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of its disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh fruits of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. 5585 Daniel Webster: Speech. United States Senate, Jan. 26-27, 1830. The Reply to Hayne. Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. 5586 Daniel Webster: Speech, United States Senate, Jan. 26-27, 1830. The Reply to Hayne. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent: on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. 5587 Daniel Webster: Speech, United States Senate, UNIVERSE, The. The universe is a thought of God. 5588 Schiller UNKINDNESS. Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness. 5589 Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor. Discretion, the best part of valor. 5590 Beaumont and Fletcher: A King and no King. Act iv. Sc. 3. It is a brave act of valor to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live. 5591 Sir Thomas Browne: Christian Morals. Pt. i. Sec. 44. True valor lies in the middle, between cowardice and rash ness. 5592 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Ch. 4. (Jarvis, Valor consists in the power of self-recovery. 5593 Emerson Essays. Circles. Perfect valor is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world. 5594 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims. No. 218. Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from enemies. 5595 Plutarch: Lives. Emilius Paulus. I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valor. 5596 Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4. The better part of valor is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life. 5597 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Cade. Valiant I am. Smith. A must needs; for beggary is 5598 Pt. i. Act v. Sc. 4. valiant. Shakespeare: King Henry VI. Pt. ii. Act iv. Sc. 2. You may as well say, that's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. 5599 Shakespeare: King Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 7. My valor is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands. 5600 Sheridan: The Rivals. Act v. Sc. 3. As a rule, he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect, a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death. 5601 Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur. Bk. iv. Ch. 17. VANITY - see Benevolence, Curiosity, Friendship, Nature, Pride, Virtue. The vain being is the really solitary being. 5602 Auerbach: On the Heights. (Bennett, Translator.) Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride. 5603 Joanna Baillie: The Election. Act ii. Sc. 2. There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate. 5605 The knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity. (Jarvis, The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace. 5606 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 113. No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity. The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation. 5608 Johnson: The Rambler. No. 104. A vain man finds his account in speaking good or evil of himself. 5609 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Man. (Rowe, False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error. 5610 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Man. (Rowe, False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit. 5611 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Man. (Rowe, Translator.) Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that the lowest drudge of the camp, the street, or the kitchen must boast and have his admirers; and the philosophers themselves desire the same. And those who write controversially wish to have the glory of having written well; and those who read would have the glory of having read; and I who write this have, perhaps, this desire; and perhaps those who shal! read it. 5612 Pascal: Thoughts. Ch. iii., iii. (Wight, Translator. Louandre edition.) Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile. 5613 Alexander Smith: Dreamthorp. On the Importance of a Man to Himself. VARIETY -see Change. Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety. Variety is the mother of enjoyment. 5615 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Vivian Grey. Bk. v. Ch. 4. Whatever is natural admits of variety. 5616 Mme. de Staël: Corinne. Bk. i. Ch. 4. (Isabel Hill, Translator.) VENGEANCE. Good Christians should never avenge injuries. 5617 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Ch 11. (Jarvis, Translator.) Delay in vengeance gives a heavier blow. 5618 John Ford: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Act iv. Sc. 3. VENUS. Venus will not charm so much without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. 5619 Lord Chesterfield: Letter to His Son, Nov. 18, 1748. VERSATILITY. That mere will and industry can enable any man to accomplish anything is a belief common enough amongst imperfectly educated man. . . . .. But no one of really cultivated intellect denies the variety of natural endowments. 5620 Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen. François Rude. He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for |
