~Fact.~--There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy
fabric, and pure invention is but the talent of a deceiver.--_Byron._
Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is
accurately stated; how almost invariably when a story has passed through
the mind of a third person it becomes, so far as regards the impression
that it makes in further repetitions, little better than a falsehood;
and this, too, though the narrator be the most truth-seeking person in
existence.--_Hawthorne._
~Faction.~--A feeble government produces more factions than an oppressive
one.--_Fisher Ames._
It is the demon of discord armed with the power to do endless mischief,
and intent alone on destroying whatever opposes its progress.--_Crabbe._
~Failure.~--But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not
fail!--_Shakespeare._
Albeit failure in any cause produces a correspondent misery in the soul,
yet it is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every
discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is
true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we
shall afterward carefully eschew.--_Keats._
Every failure is a step to success; every detection of what is false
directs us toward what is true; every trial exhausts some tempting form
of error. Not only so, but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure;
scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false;
no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from
truth.--_Whewell._
~Faith.~--In affairs of this world men are saved not by faith but by the
want of it.--_Fielding._
All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before one
single word,--_faith_.--_Napoleon._
O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, thou hovering angel, girt
with golden wings!--_Milton._
Life grows dark as we go on, till only one clear light is left shining
on it, and that is faith.--_Madame Swetchine._
When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I
believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a
thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of
hope to the equilibrium of reason.--_Rousseau._
Flatter not thyself in thy faith to God, if thou wantest charity for thy
neighbor; and think not thou hast charity for thy neighbor, if thou
wantest faith to God: where they are not both together, they are both
wanting; they are both dead if once divided.--_Quarles._
We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely
and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a
faith at all, or it is nothing.--_Froude._
The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to
condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so
that conduct may really be the consequence of belief.--_G. H. Lewes._
~Falsehood.~--Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to
be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of
truth, as a perspective is of the reality.--_Colton._
Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and
another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they
may be light and accidental, but they are ugly soot from the smoke of
the pit, for all that: and it is better that our hearts should be swept
clean of them, without one care as to which is largest or
blackest.--_Ruskin._
It is more from carelessness about the truth, than from intentional
lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.--_Johnson._
Falsehood and fraud shoot up in every soil, the product of all
climes.--_Addison._
Round dealing is the honor of man's nature; and a mixture of falsehood
is like alloy in gold and silver, which may make the metal work the
better, but it embaseth it.--_Lord Bacon._
To lapse in fullness is sorer than to lie for need: and falsehood is
worse in king than beggar.--_Shakespeare._
A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a
lie faces God, and shrinks from man.--_Montaigne._
The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's
itself a lie.--_Pope._
No falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper but returns of force
to its own likeness.--_Milton._
Figures themselves, in their symmetrical and inexorable order, have
their mistakes like words and speeches. An hour of pleasure and an hour
of pain are alike only on the dial in their numerical arrangement.
Outside the dial they lie sixty times.--_Mery._
~Fame.~--Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest
afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the
world.--_Davenant._