There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too
late.--_Madame Swetchine._
~Prodigality.~--This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and
maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed
with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.--_Dr.
South._
When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at
the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own
death, and in a manner digging his own grave.--_Goldsmith._
The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for
these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and
flatterers.--_Socrates._
~Progress.~--All that is human must retrograde if it do not
advance.--_Gibbon._
What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little
more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is
a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he
cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to
him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in
which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.--_X. Doudan._