One lie must be thatched with another, or it will soon rain through.
Life is a journey, and they only who have traveled a considerable way in it, are fit to direct those who are setting out.
I have found by experience that many who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit but of thinking.
At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
I find one of the great things in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
The husband and the wife must, like two wheels, support the chariot of domestic life, otherwise it must stop.
The following well-merited rebuke by a slave to his master, shows that persons occupying mean positions in this life are sometimes superior to those above them.
A gentleman in the enjoyment of wealth, and of high social standing, and wholly given up to the pleasures of this world, knowing that one of his slaves was religious, and happening to see him in the garden near the porch of his house, called him up rather to amuse himself than for any serious purpose. When the slave came to him, cap in hand, he said, "Tom, what do you think of me; do you believe I will be one of the elect when I die?"
With a low obeisance, the slave replied: "Master, I never knew any one to be elected who was not a candidate."
The master, struck with the gentle but just rebuke of the man's answer, turned and entered his mansion, and from that hour became a candidate, living thereafter a good life.
Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices: whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?
In life, as in chess, forethought wins.
Yes and No are, for good or evil, the giants of life.
An old gentleman, accounting recently for his age and his happiness, said: "It is quite simple. Lead a natural life, eat what you want,—but of course prudence must be exercised—and walk on the sunny side of the street."
It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.
Are we to have a continuous performance by "I did" and "I didn't"?
Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.
No one sees what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
How small a portion of our life it is, that we really enjoy. In youth, we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.
The acts of this life are the destiny of the next.
Life is too short to be spent in nursing animosities, or in registering wrongs.
We find life exactly what we put in it.
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
Be ready at all times to listen to others.
A man with an empty stomach is a poor listener.
The only thing certain about litigation is it's uncertainty.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Where you are not appreciated, you cannot be loved.
When people fall in love at first sight, they often live to regret that they didn't take another look.
Where there is love, all things interest; where there is indifference, minute details are tedious, disbelief is cherished, and trifles are apt to be thought contemptible.
If he loves me, the merit is not mine; my fault will be if he ceases.
To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs: it wounds some feelings of tenderness—it blasts some prospects of felicity; but he is an active being; he may dissipate his thoughts in the whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure; or, if the scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations, he can shift his abode at will, and taking, as it were, the wings of the morning, can "fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest."
But woman's is comparatively a fixed, a secluded and a meditative life. She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings; and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation? Her lot is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her heart is her world—is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate.
Shall I confess it?—I believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave. So is it the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection.
To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Dr. Doddridge one day asked his little daughter how it was that everybody loved her: "I know not," said she, "unless it be that I love everybody."
He who is loved by man is loved by God.
Love is the only passion that justifies a perpetual hyperbole, i. e., poetic exaggeration.
There is an atmosphere in the letters of those we love which we alone—we who love—can feel.
Love is like the moon; when it does not increase, it decreases.
We are easily duped by those whom we love.
"Martha, does thee love me?" asked a quaker youth of one at whose shrine his heart's fondest feelings had been offered up.
"Why, Seth," answered she, "we are commanded to love one another, are we not?"
"Aye, Martha; but does thee regard me with that feeling that the world calls love?"
"I hardly know what to tell thee, Seth; I have greatly feared that my heart was an erring one. I have tried to bestow my love on all; but I have sometimes thought, perhaps, that thee was getting rather more than thy share."
No disguise can long conceal love where it is, nor feign it where it is not.
The moment one is in love one becomes so amiable.
The secret of being loved is in being lovely, and the secret of being lovely, is in being unselfish.
A lover never sees the faults of the one he loves till the enchantment is over.
Is it possible a man can be so changed by love that one would not know him for the same person?
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
Love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
"My dear Veit," said Luther, "I have said it often and I repeat it again, whoever would know God aright and speculate concerning Him without danger, must look into the manger, and learn first of all to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem, lying in His mother's bosom or hanging upon the cross; then will he understand who God is. This will not only then be not terrible, but on the contrary most attractive and comforting. Guard yourself, my dear Veit, from the proud thought of climbing into heaven without this ladder, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity. As the Word simple describes Him, stick to this, and do not permit reason to divert you from it; then will you apprehend God aright! I wish to know of no other God than the God who hung upon the cross, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and of the Virgin Mary."
Luther was remarkable for his contempt of riches, though few men had a greater opportunity of obtaining them. The Elector of Saxony offered him the produce of a mine at Sneberg, but he nobly refused it, lest it should prove an injury to him.
Dr. Johnson:—"A man gives half a guinea for a dish of green peas. How much gardening does this occasion? How many laborers must the competition, to have such things early in the market, keep in employment? You will hear it said very gravely, 'Why was not the half-guinea, thus spent in luxury, given to the poor? To how many might it have afforded a good meal? Alas! has it not gone to the industrious poor, whom it is better to support, than the idle poor? You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity."
He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of the child.
He who does not advance, goes backward; recedes.
A man who is amiable will make almost as many friends as he does acquaintances.
An angry man is often angry with himself when he returns to reason.
An old man answering to the name of Joseph Wilmot, was brought before the police court. His clothes looked as if they had been bought second hand in his youthful prime.
"What business?"
"None; I'm a traveler."
"A vagabond, perhaps?"
"You are not far wrong: the difference between the two, is, that the latter travel without money, and the former without brains."
"Where have you traveled?"
"All over the continent."
"For what purpose?"
"Observation."
"What have you observed?"
"A little to commend, much to censure, and very much to laugh at."
"Humph! What do you commend?"
"A handsome women that will stay at home, an eloquent divine that will preach short sermons, a good writer that will not write too much, and a fool that has seen enough to hold his tongue."
"What do you censure?"
"A man who marries a girl for fine clothing, a youth who studies law while he has the use of his hands, and the people who elect a drunkard to office."
"What do you laugh at?"
"At a man who expects his position to command the respect which his personal qualities and qualifications do not merit."
He was dismissed.
Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him.
As no man is born without faults, the best is he who has the fewest.
Burns, the poet, when in Edinburgh one day, recognized an old farmer friend, and courteously saluted him, and crossed the street to have a chat; some of his new Edinburgh friends gave him a gentle rebuke, to which he replied:—"It was not the old great-coat, the scone bonnet, that I spoke to, but the man that was in them."
Man has been thrown naked into the world, feeble, incapable of flying like the bird, running like the stag, or creeping like the serpent; without means of defense, in the midst of terrible enemies armed with claws and stings; without means to brave the inclemency of the seasons, in the midst of animals protected by fleece, by scales, by furs; without shelter, when all others have their den, their hole, their shell; without arms, when all about him are armed against him. And yet he has demanded of the lion his cave for a lodging and the lion retires before his eyes; he has despoiled the bear of his skin, and of it made his first clothing; he has plucked the horn from the bull, and this is his first drinking-cup; then he has dug even into the bowels of the earth, to seek there the instruments of his future strength; from a rib, a sinew, and a reed, he has made arms; and the eagle, who, seeing him at first in his weakness and nakedness, prepares to seize him as his prey, struck in mid-air, falls dead at his feet, only to furnish a feather to adorn his head. Among animals, is there one, who under such conditions could have preserved life? Let us for a moment separate the workman from his work, God from nature. Nature has done all for this insect,—of which they had been discoursing,—nothing for man. It is that man should be the product of intelligence rather than of matter; and God, in granting him this celestial gift, this ray of light from the divine fire, created him feeble and unprotected, that he might make use of it, that he might be constrained to find in himself the elements of his greatness.
Wherever a man goes to dwell his character goes with him.
Our acts make or mar us,—we are the children of our own deeds.