Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 26

HABIT.--Habits are soon a.s.sumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.--COWPER.

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.--G.D. BOARDMAN.

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink drop soileth the pure white page.--HOSEA BALLOU.

Habits are like the wrinkles on a man's brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.--H.W. SHAW.

A large part of Christian virtue consists in right habits.--PALEY.

Habit is ten times nature.--WELLINGTON.

Habit is the most imperious of all masters.--GOETHE.

I will govern my life and my thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and to read the other; for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to G.o.d (who is the searcher of our hearts) all our privacies are open?--SENECA.

The will that yields the first time with some reluctance does so the second time with less hesitation, and the third time with none at all, until presently the habit is adopted.--HENRY GILES.

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.--COLTON.

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.--MRS. SIGOURNEY.

I will be a slave to no habit; therefore farewell tobacco.--HOSEA BALLOU.

HAPPINESS.--He who is good is happy.--HABBINGTON.

If solid happiness we prize, Within our breast this jewel lies; And they are fools who roam: The world has nothing to bestow, From our own selves our joys must flow, And that dear hut, our home.

--COTTON.

The common course of things is in favor of happiness; happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want.--PALEY.

Happiness and virtue react upon each other,--the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.--LYTTON.

G.o.d loves to see his creatures happy; our lawful delight is His; they know not G.o.d that think to please Him with making themselves miserable. The idolaters thought it a fit service for Baal to cut and lance themselves; never any holy man looked for thanks from the true G.o.d by wronging himself.--BISHOP HALL.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit!--HOSEA BALLOU.

Degrees of happiness vary according to the degrees of virtue, and consequently, that life which is most virtuous is most happy.--NORRIS.

Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and grat.i.tude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.--d.i.c.kENS.

The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.--ADDISON.

To be happy is not only to be freed from the pains and diseases of the body, but from anxiety and vexation of spirit; not only to enjoy the pleasures of sense, but peace of conscience and tranquillity of mind.

--TILLOTSON.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.--HAWTHORNE.

The happiness of the tender heart is increased by what it can take away from the wretchedness of others.--J. PEt.i.t-SENN.

There is no man but may make his paradise.--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions,--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasant thought and feeling.--COLERIDGE.

To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world.

--FROUDE.

The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of pa.s.sions, but in our learning to command them.--FROM THE FRENCH.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are enabled to inspire.--d.u.c.h.eSSE DE PRASLIN.

HATRED.--The pa.s.sion of hatred is so durable and so inveterate that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is a wish for reconciliation.--BRUYeRE.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.--COLTON.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.--PLUTARCH.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.--BALZAC.

It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him whom you have injured.--TACITUS.

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil pa.s.sion.--LAMARTINE.

The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.--J. PEt.i.t-SENN.

The hatred of persons related to each other is the most violent.

--TACITUS.

When our hatred is too keen it places us beneath those we hate.

--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

HEALTH.--The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor.--SIR W. TEMPLE.

There is this difference between those two temporal blessings, health and money: Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied: and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.--COLTON.

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.--LYTTON.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words, health, peace and competence: But health consists with temperance alone; And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thy own.

--POPE.

O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.--STERNE.

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are h.o.a.rding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.--STERNE.

Health and good humor are to the human body like sunshine to vegetation.--Ma.s.sILLON.