~Valentine.~--Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great
is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other
mitred father in the calendar.--_Charles Lamb._
The fourteenth of February is a day sacred to St. Valentine! It was a
very odd notion, alluded to by Shakespeare, that on this day birds begin
to couple; hence, perhaps, arose the custom of sending on this day
letters containing professions of love and affection.--_Noah Webster._
~Valor.~--Valor gives awe, and promises protection to those who want heart
or strength to defend themselves. This makes the authority of men among
women, and that of a master buck in a numerous herd.--_Sir W. Temple._
How strangely high endeavors may be blessed, where piety and valor
jointly go.--_Dryden._
Those who believe that the praises which arise from valor are superior
to those which proceed from any other virtues have not
considered.--_Dryden._
~Vanity.~--Verily every man at his best state is altogether
vanity.--_Bible._
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same
conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in
which one of us differs from another.--_George Eliot._
One of the few things I have always most wondered at is, that there
should be any such thing as human vanity. If I had any, I had enough to
mortify it a few days ago; for I lost my mind for a whole day.--_Pope._
Greater mischiefs happen often from folly, meanness, and vanity than
from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.--_Burke._
It is vanity which makes the rake at twenty, the worldly man at forty,
and the retired man at sixty. We are apt to think that best in general
for which we find ourselves best fitted in particular.--_Pope._