~No.~--No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at
once.--_Walter Scott._
Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to
read Latin.--_Spurgeon._
The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No.
She who explains wants to be convinced.--_Alfred de Musset._
~Nobility.~--Virtue is the first title of nobility.--_Moliere._
~Nonsense.~--Nonsense is to sense as shade to light--it heightens
effect.--_Fred. Saunders._
~Nothing.~--There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn
everything to account.--_Fontaine._
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of
something.--_Richter._
~Novels.~--Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites
love them--almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed
men,--Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians,--are notorious novel
readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender
mothers.--_Thackeray._
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books
for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter
useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of
Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer
and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive
and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the
rose.--_Balzac._
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt
the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into
everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.--_Swift._
~Novelty.~--The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it
quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment--is not
half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter.
And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become
monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water
chokes, what will you drink after it?" The two points of practical
wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as
possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as as much possible, the
sources of novelty.--_Ruskin._