Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a
minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions,
born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished
and fed?--_George Eliot._
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they
love truth.--_Joubert._
It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect
ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of
virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare
to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on
opinion would starve without it.--_Colton._
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs
or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.--_Montaigne._
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history
of human errors.--_Voltaire._
If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion,
learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what
a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at
last.--_Swift._
One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that
other men's opinions are to make us happy.--_Burton._
It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with
pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they
have inaugurated a game which must be won.--_Goethe._
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge
it, the skillful direct it.--_Mme. Roland._
~Opportunity.~--The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.--_Vieland._
Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to
ourselves.--_Rochefoucauld._
What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg,
which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.--_George Eliot._
There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when
she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and
flies out at the window.--_Cardinal Imperiali._
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see
nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them
when they are gone.--_George Eliot._
Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.--_Jeremy
Collier._
A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the
love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity."--_Moore._
Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.--_Lord
Stanley._
You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make
it.--_Charles Buxton._
~Opposition.~--The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who
rise refreshed on hearing of a threat,--men to whom a crisis which
intimidates and paralyzes the majority--demanding, not the faculties of
prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of
sacrifice--comes graceful and beloved as a bride!--_Emerson._
Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent
it.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Oratory.~--Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as
men get on horseback when they cannot walk.--_Cicero._
Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a
positive pleasure in catching resemblances for
themselves.--_Aristotle._
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument
and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should
take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the
lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the
lightning.--_Colton._