Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 44

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like the aged man reclining under the shadow of the oak which he has planted.--SCOT'S MAGAZINE.

With joy the parent loves to trace Resemblance in his children's face: And, as he forms their docile youth To walk the steady paths of truth, Observes them shooting into men, And lives in them life o'er again.

--LLOYD.

Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth thee.--EXODUS 20:12.

Pa.s.sION.--The pa.s.sions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest.--DR. WATTS.

Strong as our pa.s.sions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.--COLTON.

The ruling pa.s.sion, be it what it will, The ruling pa.s.sion conquers reason still.

--POPE.

Men spend their lives in the service of their pa.s.sions, instead of employing their pa.s.sions in the service of their lives.--STEELE.

The art of governing the pa.s.sions is more useful, and more important, than many things in the search and pursuit of which we spend our days.

Without this art, riches and health, and skill and knowledge, will give us little satisfaction; and whatsoever else we be, we can be neither happy, nor wise, nor good.--JORTIN.

Hold not conference, debate, or reasoning with any l.u.s.t; 'tis but a preparatory for thy admission of it. The way is at the very first flatly to deny it.--FULLER.

In the human breast two master-pa.s.sions cannot coexist.--CAMPBELL.

The pa.s.sions act as winds to propel our vessel, our reason is the pilot that steers her; without the winds she would not move, without the pilot she would be lost.--FROM THE FRENCH.

Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by pa.s.sion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.--MRS. JAMESON.

Our headstrong pa.s.sions shut the door of our souls against G.o.d.

--CONFUCIUS.

Men will always act according to their pa.s.sions. Therefore the best government is that which inspires the n.o.bler pa.s.sions and destroys the meaner.--JACOBI.

The pa.s.sions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred maybe a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the pa.s.sions pure, makes them stronger, more durable, and more enjoyable.

--JOUBERT.

The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a pa.s.sion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pa.s.s before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.--HELPS.

As rivers, when they overflow, drown those grounds, and ruin those husbandmen, which, whilst they flowed calmly betwixt their banks, they fertilized and enriched; so our pa.s.sions, when they grow exorbitant and unruly, destroy those virtues, to which they may be very serviceable whilst they keep within their bounds.--BOYLE.

Pa.s.sion costs too much to bestow it upon every trifle.--REV. THOMAS ADAM.

Words may be counterfeit, false coined, and current only from the tongue, without the mind; but pa.s.sion is in the soul, and always speaks the heart.--SOUTHERN.

A genuine pa.s.sion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.--BOVEE.

Pa.s.sion is the drunkenness of the mind.--SOUTH.

Exalted souls Have pa.s.sions in proportion violent, Resistless, and tormenting; they're a tax Imposed by nature on pre-eminence, And fort.i.tude and wisdom must support them.

--LILLO.

One master-pa.s.sion in the breast, Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.

--POPE.

Oh how the pa.s.sions, insolent and strong, Bear our weak minds their rapid course along; Make us the madness of their will obey; Then die and leave us to our griefs a prey!

--CRABBE.

A great pa.s.sion has no partner.--LAVATER.

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of pa.s.sion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.--THOMAS PAINE.

He who is pa.s.sionate and hasty is generally honest. It is your cool, dissembling hypocrite of whom you should beware.--LAVATER.

The pa.s.sions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.--BOVEE.

It is not the absence, but the mastery, of our pa.s.sions which affords happiness.--MME. DE MAINTENON.

PAST.--The past is utterly indifferent to its worshipers.--WILLIAM WINTER.

Not to know what happened before we were born is always to remain a child; to know, and blindly to adopt that knowledge as an implicit rule of life, is never to be a man.--CHATFIELD.

No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are pa.s.sed.

--BYRON.

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past.--TRENCH.

Study the past if you would divine the future.--CONFUCIUS.

The best of prophets of the future is the past.--BYRON.

Many cla.s.ses are always praising the by-gone time, for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak, the area of their strength; the sick, the season of their vigor; and the disappointed, the springtide of their hopes!--C. BINGHAM.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.--WILLIAM PENN.

The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.--RICHTER.

PATIENCE.--He that can have patience can have what he will.--FRANKLIN.

Patience! why, it is the soul of peace; of all the virtues, it is nearest kin to heaven; it makes men look like G.o.ds. The best of men that ever wore earth about him was a sufferer,--a soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; the first true gentleman that ever breathed.

--DECKER.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.--ADDISON.

If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.--MADAME DE SeVIGNe.

Never think that G.o.d's delays are G.o.d's denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.--BUFFON.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.--BURKE.