Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 22

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.--CHAPIN.

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.--ADDISON.

How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill!

it is only the thought of the future that makes them great.--RICHTER.

If there was no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.--RICHTER.

GAMBLING.--There is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card-table, and those cutting pa.s.sions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard looks and pale complexions are the natural indications.--STEELE.

Games of chance are traps to catch school boy novices and gaping country squires, who begin with a guinea and end with a mortgage.

--c.u.mBERLAND.

All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.--WHATELY.

There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away.--CHATFIELD.

I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand; and all that follows in his fatal career from that time is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.--c.u.mBERLAND.

It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.--WASHINGTON.

GENEROSITY.--All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.--MRS. JAMESON.

He who gives what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.--HENRY TAYLOR.

Generosity is only benevolence in practice.--BISHOP KEN.

The secret pleasure of a generous act is the great mind's great bribe.

--DRYDEN.

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.--SOUTH.

Some are unwisely liberal; and more delight to give presents than to pay debts.--SIR P. SIDNEY.

When you give, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.--HENRY TAYLOR.

The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.--LAVATER.

Men of the n.o.blest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.--DUNCAN.

In giving, a man receives more than he gives; and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.--GEORGE MACDONALD.

Let us proportion our alms to our ability, lest we provoke G.o.d to proportion His blessings to our alms.--BEVERIDGE.

A friend to everybody is often a friend to n.o.body, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes brother to a beggar. There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else.

--SPURGEON.

GENIUS.--Genius is an immense capacity for taking trouble.--CARLYLE.

Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last.--LAVATER.

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has but one talent for a genius.--HELPS.

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.--OUIDA.

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.--BEECHER.

The first and last thing which is required of genius is the love of truth.--GOETHE.

Genius can never despise labor.--ABEL STEVENS.

And genius hath electric power, Which earth can never tame; Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower-- Its flash is still the same.

--LYDIA M. CHILD.

Genius must be born, and never can be taught.--DRYDEN.

Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.--LADY BLESSINGTON.

One science only will one genius fit; So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

--POPE.

I know no such thing as genius,--genius is nothing but labor and diligence.--HOGARTH.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.--LONGFELLOW.

Genius, without religion, is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in darkness.--HANNAH MORE.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.--SIR J. REYNOLDS.

GENTLEMAN.--Propriety of manners, and consideration for others, are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.--BEACONSFIELD.

To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor or the toilet. Good clothes are not good habits. A gentleman is just a gentle-man,--no more, no less; a diamond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough.--BISHOP DOANE.

What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his taste to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and n.o.ble?--THACKERAY.

The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just and amiable, perfects the character of the gentleman and the philosopher.

And the study of such a taste or relish will, as we suppose, be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good, as agreeable and polite.--SHAFTESBURY.

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.--LOCKE.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

--COLERIDGE.

He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue.--VICTOR HUGO.