Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 37

As a man's salutations, so is the total of his character; in nothing do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation.--LAVATER.

Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.--EMERSON.

Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colors to our lives. According to their quality they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.--BURKE.

Good breeding is the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them.--CHESTERFIELD.

To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.--HANNAH MORE.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.--CHESTERFIELD.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.--LYTTON.

MARRIAGE.--Save the love we pay to heaven, there is none purer, holier, than that a virtuous woman feels for him she would cleave through life to. Sisters part from sisters, brothers from brothers, children from their parents, but such woman from the husband of her choice, never!--SHERIDAN KNOWLES.

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.--GOLDSMITH.

A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.--JEREMY TAYLOR.

A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.--SOUTHEY.

It is not good that the man should be alone.--GENESIS 2:18.

The most unhappy circ.u.mstance of all is, when each party is always laying up fuel for dissension, and gathering together a magazine of provocations to exasperate each other with when they are out of humor.--STEELE.

When thou choosest a wife, think not only of thyself, but of those G.o.d may give thee of her, that they reproach thee not for their being.

--TUPPER.

An obedient wife commands her husband.--TENNYSON.

No man can either live piously or die righteous without a wife.

--RICHTER.

Two persons who have chosen each other out of all the species with a design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment have, in that action, bound themselves to be good-humored, affable, discreet, forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties and perfections, to the end of their lives.--ADDISON.

Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.--AARON HILL.

A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.--DR. JOHNSON.

Go down the ladder when thou marriest a wife; go up when thou choosest a friend.--RABBI BEN AZAI.

Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust for marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first by showing that she made him so happy as a married man that he wishes to be so a second time.--DR. JOHNSON.

Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle pow'rs, We who improve his golden hours, By sweet experience know, That marriage, rightly understood, Gives to the tender and the good A paradise below.

--COTTON.

As a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honorable than the bare brow of a bachelor.

--SHAKESPEARE.

G.o.d the best maker of all marriages.--SHAKESPEARE.

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

The following "marriage" maxims are worthy of more than a hasty reading. Husbands should not pa.s.s them by, for they are designed for wives; and wives should not despise them, for they are addressed to husbands:--

1. The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness.

2. Never both be angry at once.

3. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company.

4. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire.

5. Let each one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other.

6. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each.

7. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly.

8. Never taunt with a past mistake.

9. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another.

10. Never allow a request to be repeated.

11. Never make a remark at the expense of each other,--it is a meanness.

12. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence.

13. Never meet without a loving welcome.

14. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance.

15. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness.

16. Never forget the happy hours of early love.

17. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is.

18. Never forget that marriage is ordained of G.o.d, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be.

19. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way.

20. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home.

--COTTAGER AND ARTISAN.