Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 16

Unless your cask is perfectly clean, whatever you pour into it turns sour.--HORACE.

Prussia is great because her people are intelligent. They know the alphabet. The alphabet is conquering the world.--G.W. CURTIS.

Next in importance to freedom and justice, is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.--GASCOIGNE.

On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free inst.i.tutions.--WEBSTER.

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character. Let parents bear this ever in mind.--HOSEA BALLOU.

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.--CHAPIN.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think,--rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.--BEATTIE.

Into what boundless life does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being--positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy.--CHAPIN.

All that a university or final highest school can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books.--CARLYLE.

If you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them--you first make thieves and then punish them.--SIR THOMAS MORE.

'Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

--POPE.

EGOTISM.--When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed, his praises never.--MONTAIGNE.

Be your character what it will, it will be known; and n.o.body will take it upon your word.--CHESTERFIELD.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not to talk of ourselves at all.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

It is never permissible to say, I say.--MADAME NECKER.

The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.

--ZIMMERMANN.

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.--HARE.

The more anyone speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.--LAVATER.

Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.--PASCAL.

He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks that others cannot do without him is still more mistaken.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

ELOQUENCE.--Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a ma.n.u.script; every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.--COLTON.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compa.s.s it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.--WEBSTER.

There is as much eloquence in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker, as in his choice of words.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

EMPLOYMENT.--Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.--BLAIR.

The rust rots the steel which use preserves.--LYTTON.

Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.--SENECA.

The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.

--JEREMY TAYLOR.

Employment, which Galen calls "nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness, that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery.--BURTON.

ENTHUSIASM.--Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the pa.s.sing from the human to the divine.--EMERSON.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

--BEACONSFIELD.

Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment.--TUCKERMAN.

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.--LYTTON.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.--EMERSON.

The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as a leader.

--ARTHUR HELPS.

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would enn.o.ble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

ENVY.--There is not a pa.s.sion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.--SHERIDAN.

An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.--SOCRATES.

As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man.--ST. CHRYSOSTOM.

We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a pa.s.sion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.--PLINY.

Base envy withers at another's joy, And hates that excellence it cannot reach.

--THOMSON.

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this pa.s.sion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow-creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!--STEELE.

The truest mark of being born with great qualities is being born without envy.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpa.s.s, but that which surpa.s.ses them they censure.--COLTON.