Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 17

Envy--the rottenness of the bones.--PROVERBS 14:30.

There is no guard to be kept against envy, because no man knows where it dwells, and generous and innocent men are seldom jealous and suspicious till they feel the wound.

Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees.--SAADI.

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by a defeat.--COLTON.

Envy is a pa.s.sion so full of cowardice and shame, that n.o.body ever had the confidence to own it.--ROCHESTER.

ETERNITY.--He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.--COLTON.

Let us be adventurers for another world. It is at least a fair and n.o.ble chance; and there is nothing in this worth our thoughts or our pa.s.sions. If we should be disappointed, we are still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we are eternally happy.--BURNET.

Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of eternity.--BISHOP HEBER.

The vaulted void of purple sky That everywhere extends, That stretches from the dazzled eye, In s.p.a.ce that never ends; A morning whose uprisen sun No setting e'er shall see; A day that comes without a noon, Such is eternity.

--CLARE.

"What is eternity?" was a question once asked at the Deaf and Dumb Inst.i.tution at Paris, and the beautiful and striking answer was given by one of the pupils, "The lifetime of the Almighty."--JOHN BATE.

If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven.

--TILLOTSON.

EVIL.--The doing an evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.--COLERIDGE.

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.

--SHAKESPEARE.

Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart.

--HOOD.

To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil with evil is evil.--MOHAMMED.

We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.--DESMAHIS.

Every evil to which we do not succ.u.mb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills pa.s.ses into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.--EMERSON.

If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not.

--FRANKLIN.

As sure as G.o.d is good, so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil.--SOUTHEY.

In the history of man it has been very generally the case that when evils have grown insufferable they have touched the point of cure.

--CHAPIN.

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope, and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of wisdom and love.--CHANNING.

EXAMPLE.--Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.--REV. R. CECIL.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.--GOLDSMITH.

A wise and good man will turn examples of all sorts to his own advantage. The good he will make his patterns, and strive to equal or excel them. The bad he will by all means avoid.--THOMAS a KEMPIS.

None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.--FRANKLIN.

No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.--HOSEA BALLOU.

I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.--HERODOTUS.

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.--H.W. SHAW.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.--QUARLES.

Example is contagious behavior.--CHARLES READE.

The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a t.i.the of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but he went about doing good.

--HORACE MANN.

The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.--DR. JOHNSON.

EXCESS.--Excess always carries its own retribution.--OUIDA.

The misfortune is, that when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appet.i.te so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety.--KNOX.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

--SHAKESPEARE.

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.--COLTON.

The body oppressed by excesses, bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with.

--HORACE.

Every morsel to a satisfied hunger is only a new labor to a tired digestion.--SOUTH.

Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal.

--ST. EVREMOND.

EXERCISE.--A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick.--SIR W. TEMPLE.

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.--CICERO.

There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.--BEECHER.