Life and Literature / Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, / and classified in alphabetical order

When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.

—Sir Walter Scott.

"Live and let live" was his rule: no more I'll say.

There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word is reciprocity;

—Confucius.

The bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor can human nature subsist without recreation.

—Cervantes.

Regret.—It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

—Whately.

Relaxation above produces remissness below. (In authority.)

—Chinese.

A religion that costs nothing, does nothing.

They who doubt the blessings of religion because they find no Christian who is perfect, might as well deny the existence of the sun because it is not always noonday.

—Marchioness de Spadara.

Religion is good for nothing one day in the week, unless it is also good for all the seven days.

Religion is the knowledge of the most excellent truths; the contemplation of the most glorious objects, and the hope of the most ravishing pleasures, and the practice of such duties as are most servicable to our happiness, our peace, our health, our honor, our prosperity, and our eternal welfare. Virtue needs no outward pomp; her very countenance is so full of majesty, that the proudest pay her respect, and the profanest are awed by her presence.

It is rare to see a rich man religious; for religion preaches restraint, and riches prompt to unlicensed freedom.

—Feltham.

Religion lies more in the walk than in the talk.

REPENTANCE.

—Drexelius.

—Quarles.

Profanity Gently Reproved.—It is related that the excellent John Wesley, having to travel some distance in a stagecoach, was thereby brought into the company of an intelligent and gentlemanly officer of the British army. The officer was very social with his traveling companions; but the enjoyment, which his society would otherwise have afforded to those with him, was sadly lessened by the profane expressions he used.

After I have named the man, I need say no more.

PERFECT RESIGNATION.

It is reported of a person who, being ill, was asked whether she was willing to live or die; she answered—"Which God pleases." "But," said one, "if God should refer it to you, which would you choose?" "Truly," replied she, "I would at once refer it to Him again."

—W. Secker.

REST.

OUR PRESENT NEED.

—Wm. J. Lampton.

Rest is sweet to those who labor.

—Plutarch.

Take Rest.—A field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

—Ovid.

"If I rest too much, I rust,"—says the key.

Quick resolves are often unsafe.

Irresolute people often let their soup grow cold between the plate and the mouth.

Sleep over it and you will come to a resolution.

—Spanish.

Those who act in a disinterested way seldom miss their reward.

One knows not for whom he gathers.

—French.

It is wealth to a man to be able to live contentedly upon a frugal store.

RUSKIN MEETS SOME TOURISTS.

"I was fated the other day to come from Venice to Verona with a family—father and mother and two girls—it matters not what country they came from—presumably rich—girls fifteen and eighteen. I never before conceived the misery of people who had evidently spent all their lives in trying to gratify themselves. It was a little warm—warmer than was entirely luxurious—but nothing in the least harmful. They moaned and fidgeted and frowned and puffed and stretched and fanned, and ate lemons, and smelled bottles, and covered their faces, and tore the cover off again, and had not one thought or feeling during five hours of traveling in the most noble part of all the world except what four poor beasts would have had in their end of a menagerie, being dragged about on a hot day. Add to this misery every form of polite vulgarity, in methods of doing and saying the common things they said and did. I never yet saw humanity so degraded (allowing for external circumstances of every possible advantage) given wealth, attainable education and the inheritance of eighteen centuries of Christianity."

—Letter to Charles E. Morton in the Atlantic.

The generous should be rich, and the rich should be generous.

Very rich men seldom or never whistle; poor men always do.

Who is truly rich? He who is satisfied with what he possesses.

—From The Talmud.

It is difficult to gather a heap in a long time, but it is easy to squander the whole in a day.

—Diphilus.

Sir Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charter House, was one of the wealthiest merchants of his day. Fuller tells how he was overheard one day praying in his garden: "Lord, Thou hast given me a large and liberal estate; give me also a heart to make use of it."

Riches and care are as inseparable as sun and shadow.

As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be below mediocrity, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.

I remember when Mr. Locke first came over from Italy. Old Dr. Moore, who had a high opinion of him, was crying up his drawings, and asked me if I did not think he would make a great painter? I said, "No, never!" "Why not?" "Because he has six thousand a year."

—Northcote.

Few men are both rich and generous; fewer are both rich and humble.

—Manning.

Riches serve a wise man but command a fool.

—German.

—Pope.

Riches:—We see how much a man has, and therefore we envy him; did we see how little he enjoys, we would rather pity him.

—Seed.

My riches consist not in the greatness of my possessions, but in the smallness of my wants.

—Cobbett.

OPULENCE.

Every one who rightly considers it, may know, that eminence and opulence in the world are not real divine blessings, notwithstanding man, from the pleasure he finds in them, calls them so; for they pass away, and also seduce many, and turn them away from heaven; but that eternal life, and its happiness, are real blessings, which are from the Divine: this the Lord also teaches in Luke: 12 ch., 33-34. "Make to yourselves a treasure that faileth not in the heavens, where the thief cometh not, nor the moth corrupteth; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

—Emanuel Swedenborg, 1688-1772.

Without frugality none can become rich, and with it, few would become poor.

—Dr. Johnson.

No man has a right to do as he pleases, except when he pleases to do right.

Late Rising.—He who rises late, must trot all day, and will scarcely overtake his business at night.

—Dr. Fuller.

To wish for anything that is unattainable is worthless, and a poor road to travel.

—Shakespeare.

One roof and two winds—i. e., persons of opposite tempers living together.

—Chinese.

—Chinese.

If a man could make a single rose, we should give him an empire; yet roses, and flowers no less beautiful, are scattered in profusion over the world, and no one regards them.

Royalty is but a feather in a man's cap; let children enjoy their rattle.

—Cromwell.

There cannot be a greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

—Locke.

No rumor wholly dies, once bruited wide.

—Hesiod, a Greek, 850 B. C.

He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor.

—O. W. Holmes.

Those persons who are in the habit of avoiding worldly cares on the Sabbath, are the most remarkable for the perfect performance of their duties during the week. The influence of a change of thought on the Sabbath upon the minds of such persons, resembles that of a change of food upon the body. It seems to give a fresh spring to the mental operations, as the latter does to the physical.

SABBATH.

—Grahame.

A well-spent Sabbath on earth, prepares us for the spending of a better one in heaven.

Better a little in safety, than an abundance, surrounded by danger.

More can be said in one minute than can be forgotten in a lifetime.

SALT.

When Henry Drummond was traveling in tropical Africa, he found that salt was regarded by the natives as a rare luxury. Often he offered the native boys the choice between a pinch of salt and a lump of sugar, and they always chose the salt. Once he presented the head man of a village with a spoonful of salt. The chief twisted a leaf into a little bag, into which he poured the salt. Then he held out his hand to the children who crowded around, and each was allowed one lick of his empty palm.

A NAME ON THE SEA SAND.

EMULATION IN A SCHOOL.

More is learned in a public than in a private school from emulation: there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre.

—Dr. Johnson.

THE DAME—SCHOOL.

—Henry Kirke White.

EARLY TRIALS OF DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS.

It is related of Dr. Adam, the celebrated rector of the High School of Edinburgh, that when at college he had to be content with a penny roll for his dinner. Similar, though more severe, were the early trials of Samuel Drew, also of Edinburgh. At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, a calling which he continued to follow long after he had become celebrated as an author. For days and days together in his early life he was too poor to spend even a penny for his dinner; and he was accustomed, when dinner-time came, to tie his apron-string tighter to lessen the pang of hunger, and go on with his work till evening. Through years of hardship and drudgery his courage never forsook him; amidst ceaseless labor he strove unremittingly to improve his mind, studying astronomy, history, and metaphysics; and finally, from the humblest circumstances, he rose to occupy a conspicuous place as an author, a philosopher, and a metaphysician.

Scotland:—With a rigorous climate and a small country, much of it wild and untillable mountain and moor, and with fewer people in the whole country than in the city of London, and to-day she wields an influence in the world out of all proportion to her population and resources. In fact, the Scotch are in many respects the greatest people of modern times.

—From "A Year in Europe."
—By Walter W. Moore, D. D., LL. D.

Love the sea? I dote upon it—from the beach.

—Douglas Jerrold.

How sweet it is, mother, to see the sea from the land, when we are not sailing!

—Archippus.

THOUGHTS AT SEA.

Old people see best in the distance.

—German.

—Shakespeare.

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

What is known to three is usually known to everybody.

Those who enquire much into the affairs of others are seldom capable of retaining the secret that they learn; Therefore,

To keep your own secrets is wisdom; but to expect others to keep them is folly.

—Holmes.

Secrets make a dungeon of the heart, and a jailer of its owner.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

—Johnson.

Be able at all times to yield your personal preference.

—Gestfeld.

Be what your friends think you are; avoid being what your enemies say you are.

Wouldst thou be crowned monarch of a little world, command thyself.

CONCEIT OF SELF REBUKED.

"When I was younger than I am now," says a lawyer who is still somewhat this side of middle age, "I had a position in the office of a man who has a big reputation. Naturally, I felt my responsibility. It was plain to me that the head of the firm had outlived his usefulness, and I used to feel sorry to think what would happen to him if I ever left him. Sheer magnanimity made me overlook a lot of things.

"I wasn't treated in that office with all the deference due me, but I stood it till one day somebody went too far. Then I marched into the old gentleman's private office and laid down the law to him. I told him I wasn't going to endure such treatment another day. I was going to quit, that was what I was going to do, and I was going to quit right then and there. I unburdened my mind freely, and then I stopped to give him a chance to apologize and beg me not to ruin him by leaving. He didn't look up from his desk. He said to me in a polite kind of way, 'Please don't slam the door when you go out.'"

—Washington Post.

—Creech.

SELF-DENIAL.

Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.

—Sir Walter Scott.

Give us something to admire in yourself, not in your belongings.—(To one who boasts of his ancestry.)

Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

—Whately.

—Shaw.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

—Longfellow.

The personal pronoun "I" should be the coat of arms of some individuals.

—Rivarol.

He that is warm is apt to think all are so.

The Lord doesn't look so much at what you've given, as to what you have left.

—An Old Writer.

—Cotton.

Remember that self-interest is more likely to warp your judgment than all other circumstances combined, therefore, look well to your duty when your interest is concerned.

The world is very much ruled by interest alone.

The least that one can say of himself is still too much.

—Joubert.

He that falls in love with himself will have no rival.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

—Holland.

On their own merits modest men are dumb.

—Geo. Colman.

It is more easy to be wise for others, than for ourselves.

—La Rochefoucauld.

No man fights a harder battle than the man who overcomes himself.

To me, there is none like you but yourself.

—From the address of a grateful Hindoo to Sir Wm. Jones.

One always knocks one's self on the sore place.

—From the French.