Christ.

Our religion sets before us, not the example of a stupid stoic who had by o bstinate principles hardened himself against all sense of pain beyond the common measures of humanity, but an example of a man like ourselves, that had a tender sense of the least suffering, and yet patiently endured the greatest.Tillotson. Influence.He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult not hing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but let him consecrate his e nergies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He mus t raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures.Goethe . Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heav en had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have h eard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!Emer son. But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only f low from false propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true o r false, it is a preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.B urke. Life.Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infan t clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the piece s are swept[Pg 153] back into the boxblack box with the gilded nails!Bulwer-Lytton . Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just as the bo dy in some conditions has a kind of famine for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt sick sailor's call for a lemon or raw potato.H olmes. No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider t his, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.Thomas Kempis.[Pg 151] He is good that does good to others. If he suffers for the good he does, he is b etter still; and if he suffers from them to whom he did good, he is arrived to t hat height of goodness that nothing but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if it proves his death, his virtue is at its summit,it is heroism complete.Br uyre. Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless commodity , but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most of the great fortunes in the kingdom.F ielding. Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pa ss that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in th e line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as su re as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.Robert Collyer. Biography.As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them t o pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.Pl utarch. It is strictly and philosophically true in nature and reason that there is no su ch thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any e vent; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause.Ada m Clarke. Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his p

ublic triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being a sked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I fe lt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day. "Plutarch. 'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's pleasures to ourselves. 'Tis like a c hild's using a little bird"Oh, poor bird, thou shalt sleep with me"so lays it in h is bosom and stifles it with his hot breath. The bird had rather be in the cold air. And yet, too, 'tis the most pleasing flattery to like what other men like.Se lden. Oh, what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbat h-day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.W. Wil berforce. Libels.Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property. Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all valuable. The law forbids you to rev enge; when it ties up the hands of some, it ought to restrain the tongues of oth ers.Burke. What is death? To go out like a light, and in a sweet trance to forget ourselves and all the passing phenomena of the day, as we forget the phantoms of a fleeti ng dream; to form, as in a dream, new connections with God's world; to enter int o a more exalted sphere, and to make a new step up man's graduated ascent of cre ation.Zschokke. Every human soul has the germ of some flowers within; and they would open if the y could only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and ther e will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there is.Mrs . L. M. Child. If the first death be the mistress of mortals, and the mistress of the universe, reflect then on the brevity of life. "I have been, and that is all," said Salad in the Great, who was conqueror of the East. The longest liver had but a handful of days, and life itself is but a circle, always beginning where it ends.Henry M ayhew.[Pg 155] There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sen se; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verse s.Sydney Smith. The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes . First men were in chains which went back to an iron hand. Then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was d espotism, iron and ruling by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.We ndell Phillips. Diffidence.Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself. If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not, please. But with proper endeavors to please, an d a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will.Chester field.[Pg 65] Opposition.The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refres hed on hearing of a threat,men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes t he majoritydemanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension , immovableness, the readiness of sacrificecomes graceful and beloved as a bride!E merson. I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to t each them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed pra yers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhap py!Sydney Smith. The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and l

ounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but t o have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the d ay after.Dickens. There are as many kinds of love as there are races. A great tall German, learned , virtuous, phlegmatic, said one day: "Souls are sisters, fallen from heaven, wh o all at once recognize and run to meet each other." A little dry Frenchman, hot -blooded, witty, lively, replied to him: "You are right; you can always find sho es to fit."Taine. Bible.As those wines which flow from the first treading of the grapes are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness o f the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow fr om a gentle crush of the Scriptures and are not wrung into controversies and com monplaces.Bacon. Disposition.A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake inc apable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the mo st amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.F ielding.[Pg 67] The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the supers titious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devo ut prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore.Macaulay. Pretence.As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the rev erse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humb ug.Bulwer-Lytton. Adversity.If adversity hath killed his thousands, prosperity hath killed his ten thousands; therefore adversity is to be preferred. The one deceives, the other i nstructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore ma ny philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity and so much commend it in thei r precepts.Burton. Ancestry.We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and ar e therefore the furthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain the fouler the strea m: and that first ancestor who has soiled his fingers by labor is no better than a parvenu.Froude. Wisdom.Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house some time before it f all; it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and ma de room for him; it is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they w ould devour.Bacon. Atheism.By burning an atheist, you have lent importance to that which was absurd, interest to that which was forbidding, light to that which was the essence of d arkness. For atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumi nation except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.Colton. It is an argument of a candid, ingenuous mind to delight in the good name and co mmendations of others; to pass by their defects and take notice of their virtues ; and to speak or hear willingly of the latter; for in this indeed you may be li ttle less guilty than the evil speaker, in taking pleasure in evil, though you s peak it not.Leighton. Repose.Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has m ade up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more tha nkful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he i s to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranqui llity.Sydney Smith. All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courte

d, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The w ant of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses w ith malignity.Johnson. As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all tha t is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant a nd noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite suffi cient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfac tory and unsafe.Landor. Reflection.We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has h appened.Sydney Smith. Where is heaven? I cannot tell. Even to the eye of faith, heaven looks much like a star to the eye of flesh. Set there on the brow of night, it shines most brig ht, most beautiful; but it is separated from us by so great a distance as to be raised almost as high above our investigations as above the storms and clouds of earth.Rev. Dr. Guthrie. Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success,to this man a foremost place, to the other a na meless struggle with the crowd; to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or s udden accident; to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.Thackeray. If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and ta ke delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.Balzac.[Pg 152] Luxury.Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they w ill lead us.John Adams. Clergymen.The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always consid ered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.Johnson. If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immorta l minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to al l eternity.Daniel Webster. Refined policy has ever been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as lo ng as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean f orce in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.Burke.