world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could
by any possibility marry.--HOLMES.
True love is humble, thereby is it known;
Girded for service, seeking not its own;
Vaunts not itself, but speaks in self-dispraise.
--ABRAHAM COLES.
Love without faith is as bad as faith without love.--BEECHER.
MAN.--Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of
the man.--1 COR. 11:7.
Do you know what a man is? Are not birth, beauty, good shape,
discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality,
and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?--SHAKESPEARE.
A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he
inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined
him.--GOETHE.
Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.
--TENNYSON.
It is an error to suppose that a man belongs to himself. No man does.
He belongs to his wife, or his children, or his relations, or to his
creditors, or to society in some form or other.--G.A. SALA.
The record of life runs thus: Man creeps into childhood,--bounds into
youth,--sobers into manhood,--softens into age,--totters into second
childhood, and slumbers into the cradle prepared for him,--thence to
be watched and cared for.--HENRY GILES.
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
--YOUNG.
He is the whole encyclopædia of facts. The creation of a thousand
forests is in one acorn; and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain,
America, lie folded already in the first man.--EMERSON.
Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.--BURKE.
Man is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this,--one
dog does not change a bone with another.--ADAM SMITH.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
--POPE.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mix'd in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
--SHAKESPEARE.
Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
--JOB 14:1.
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is
one rascal less in the world.--CARLYLE.
An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to
form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms,
but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.--EMERSON.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action,
how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!--SHAKESPEARE.
There are but three classes of men, the retrograde, the stationary,
and the progressive.--LAVATER.
Before man made us citizens, great nature made us men.--LOWELL.
MANNERS.--Evil communications corrupt good manners.--1 COR. 15:33.
The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses
with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved,
love measure.--EMERSON.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we
converse.--SWIFT.
I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that
of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I
should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of
well-bred.--CHESTERFIELD.
A man's worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.
--LA BRUYÈRE.
There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful
benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.--LYTTON.
In the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as
want of manners.--LAVATER.
Good manners are a part of good morals.--WHATLEY.
One principal part of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the
three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those
below us.--SWIFT.
As a man's salutations, so is the total of his character; in nothing
do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and
salutation.--LAVATER.
Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of
genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at
last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its
details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which
give such a depth to the morning meadows.--EMERSON.
Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase,
barbarize or refine, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible
operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole
form and colors to our lives. According to their quality they aid
morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.--BURKE.
Good breeding is the result of much good sense, some good nature, and
a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain
the same indulgence from them.--CHESTERFIELD.
To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of
virtue.--HANNAH MORE.
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's
ill manners.--CHESTERFIELD.
The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a
calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits,
from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live
in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while
low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making
such an amazing noise about it.--LYTTON.
MARRIAGE.--Save the love we pay to heaven, there is none purer,
holier, than that a virtuous woman feels for him she would cleave
through life to. Sisters part from sisters, brothers from brothers,
children from their parents, but such woman from the husband of her
choice, never!--SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would
wear well.--GOLDSMITH.
A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his
situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits
are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his
self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be
darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home
over which he is a monarch.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he
can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of
his nature are never called into action.--SOUTHEY.
It is not good that the man should be alone.--GENESIS 2:18.
The most unhappy circumstance of all is, when each party is always
laying up fuel for dissension, and gathering together a magazine of
provocations to exasperate each other with when they are out of
humor.--STEELE.
When thou choosest a wife, think not only of thyself, but of those
God may give thee of her, that they reproach thee not for their being.
--TUPPER.
An obedient wife commands her husband.--TENNYSON.
No man can either live piously or die righteous without a wife.
--RICHTER.
Two persons who have chosen each other out of all the species with a
design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment have, in
that action, bound themselves to be good-humored, affable, discreet,
forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties
and perfections, to the end of their lives.--ADDISON.
Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.--AARON HILL.
A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a
wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such
as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a
dispute about that.--DR. JOHNSON.
Go down the ladder when thou marriest a wife; go up when thou choosest
a friend.--RABBI BEN AZAI.
Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his
first wife had given him a disgust for marriage; but by taking a
second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first by showing
that she made him so happy as a married man that he wishes to be so a
second time.--DR. JOHNSON.
Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle pow'rs,
We who improve his golden hours,
By sweet experience know,
That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good
A paradise below.
--COTTON.
As a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead
of a married man more honorable than the bare brow of a bachelor.
--SHAKESPEARE.
God the best maker of all marriages.--SHAKESPEARE.
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
The following "marriage" maxims are worthy of more than a hasty
reading. Husbands should not pass them by, for they are designed for
wives; and wives should not despise them, for they are addressed to
husbands:--
1. The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the
cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness.
2. Never both be angry at once.
3. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company.
4. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire.
5. Let each one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other.
6. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each.
7. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has
been committed, and always speak lovingly.
8. Never taunt with a past mistake.
9. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another.
10. Never allow a request to be repeated.
11. Never make a remark at the expense of each other,--it is a
meanness.
12. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during
absence.
13. Never meet without a loving welcome.
14. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance.
15. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have
frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness.
16. Never forget the happy hours of early love.
17. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what
is.
18. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His
blessing alone can make it what it should ever be.
19. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the
narrow way.
20. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home.
--COTTAGER AND ARTISAN.
Mothers who force their daughters into interested marriage, are worse
than the Ammonites who sacrificed their children to Moloch--the latter
undergoing a speedy death, the former suffering years of torture, but
too frequently leading to the same result.--LORD ROCHESTER.
Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other's burden, in our share of woe.
--MILTON.
The world well tried, the sweetest thing in life
Is the unclouded welcome of a wife.
--WILLIS.
A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of
paradise.--GOETHE.
Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.--ANDREW
JACKSON.
If you wish to ruin yourself, marry a rich wife.--MICHELET.
Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can
be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without
integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty,
riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can
claim.--DR. JOHNSON.
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live
till I were married.--SHAKESPEARE.
The good wife is none of our dainty dames, who love to appear in a
variety of suits every day new; as if a good gown, like a stratagem in
war, were to be used but once. But our good wife sets up a sail
according to the keel of her husband's estate; and if of high
parentage, she doth not so remember what she was by birth, that she
forgets what she is by match.--FULLER.
Of earthly goods the best, is a good wife.--SIMONIDES.
Take the daughter of a good mother.--FULLER.
Jars concealed are half reconciled; 'tis a double task, to stop the
breach at home and men's mouths abroad. To this end, a good husband
never publicly reproves his wife. An open reproof puts her to do
penance before all that are present; after which, many study rather
revenge than reformation.--FULLER.
Every effort is made in forming matrimonial alliances to reconcile
matters relating to fortune, but very little is paid to the congeniality
of dispositions, or to the accordance of hearts.--MASSILLON.
A good wife is heaven's last best gift to man; his angel and minister
of graces innumerable; his gem of many virtues; his casket of jewels;
her voice his sweet music; her smiles his brightest day; her kiss the
guardian of his innocence; her arms the pale of his safety, the balm of
his health, the balsam of his life; her industry, his surest wealth;
her economy, his safest steward; her lips, his faithful counselors; her
bosom, the softest pillow of his cares; and her prayers, the ablest
advocates of heaven's blessings on his head.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures.--DR. JOHNSON.
MEDITATION.--Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in
her long removes, she discerneth God, as if He were near at hand.
--FELTHAM.
Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation;
honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do,
that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
--QUARLES.
MELANCHOLY.--I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against
melancholy: one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the
pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugar-plums on
the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this
mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how
true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better
than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be
thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in
others.--SYDNEY SMITH.
Melancholy sees the worst of things,--things as they may be, and not
as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning
skull.--BOVEE.
There are some people who think that they should be always mourning,
that they should put a continual constraint upon themselves, and feel
a disgust for those amusements to which they are obliged to submit.
For my own part, I confess that I know not how to conform myself to
these rigid notions. I prefer something more simple, which I also
think would be more pleasing to God.--FÉNELON.
MERCY.--Let us be merciful as well as just.--LONGFELLOW.
Consider this,--
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines
with even more brilliancy than justice.--CERVANTES.
God's mercy is a holy mercy, which knows how to pardon sin, not to
protect it; it is a sanctuary for the penitent, not for the
presumptuous.--BISHOP REYNOLDS.
It is enthroned in the heart of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
--SHAKESPEARE.
There is no better rule to try a doctrine by than the question, Is it
merciful, or is it unmerciful? If its character is that of mercy, it
has the image of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
--HOSEA BALLOU.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigor.
It is therefore my first wish to have my whole conduct distinguished
by it.--WASHINGTON.
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
--POPE.
Underneath the wings of the seraphim are stretched the arms of the
divine mercy, ever ready to receive sinners.--THE TALMUD.
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.--SHAKESPEARE.
MERIT.--There is merit without elevation, but there is no elevation
without some merit.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Distinguished merit will ever rise to oppression, and will draw lustre
from reproach. The vapors which gather round the rising sun, and
follow him in his course, seldom fail at the close of it to form a
magnificent theatre for his reception, and to invest with variegated
tints and with a softened effulgence the luminary which they cannot
hide.--ROBERT HALL.
On their own merits modest men are dumb.--GEORGE COLMAN.
The art of being able to make a good use of moderate abilities wins
esteem and often confers more reputation than real merit.--LA BRUYÈRE.
The mark of extraordinary merit is to see those most envious of it
constrained to praise.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
METHOD.--Method is essential, and enables a larger amount of work to
be got through with satisfaction. "Method," said Cecil (afterward Lord
Burleigh), "is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in
half as much again as a bad one." Cecil's despatch of business was
extraordinary; his maxim being, "The shortest way to do many things is
to do only one thing at once."--SAMUEL SMILES.
MIND.--Our minds are like certain vehicles,--when they have little to
carry they make much noise about it, but when heavily loaded they run
quietly.--ELIHU BURRITT.
We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes
of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he
cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh
at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head
broke.--POPE.
It is the mind that makes the body rich.--SHAKESPEARE.
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but
cannot receive great ones.--CHESTERFIELD.
Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measur'd by my soul:
The mind's the standard of the man.
--DR. WATTS.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
--MILTON.
The blessing of an active mind, when it is in a good condition, is,
that it not only employs itself, but is almost sure to be the means of
giving wholesome employment to others.
He that has treasures of his own
May leave the cottage or the throne,
May quit the globe, and dwell alone
Within his spacious mind.
--DR. WATTS.
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows
corrupt.--ROUSSEAU.
Every great mind seeks to labor for eternity. All men are captivated
by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by the prospect
of distant good.--SCHILLER.
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.--BOVEE.
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of
intelligence must direct the man of labor.--DR. JOHNSON.
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without
culture, so the mind without cultivation can never produce good
fruit.--SENECA.
Few minds wear out; more rust out.--BOVEE.
There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. Like imprisoned steam,
the more it is pressed the more it rises to resist the pressure. The
more we are obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish.
--T. EDWARDS.
Minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is
beyond their range.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Guard well thy thoughts: our thoughts are heard in heaven.--YOUNG.
It is the mind that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
--SPENSER.
He that has no resources of mind, is more to be pitied than he who is
in want of necessaries for the body; and to be obliged to beg our
daily happiness from others, bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than
that of him who begs his daily bread.--COLTON.
A good mind possesses a kingdom.
MIRTH.--Harmless mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of
the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not
in quantity, quality, or season.--FULLER.
Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the
blessed spirit that God has set in the mind to dust it, to enliven its
dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the
back door. It is just as good, in its place, as conscience or
veneration. Praying can no more be made a substitute for smiling than
smiling can for praying.--BEECHER.
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;
And ev'ry grin so merry draws one out.
--PETER PINDAR.
There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do
like it in others. O, we need it! We need all the counterweights we
can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made many
sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from
them?--HALIBURTON.
I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one
another next morning.--IZAAK WALTON.
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care,
moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off
by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub
himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs,
in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which
it runs.--BEECHER.
MISFORTUNE.--The diamond of character is revealed by the concussion of
misfortune, as the splendor of the precious jewel of the mine is
developed by the blows of the lapidary.--F.A. DURIVAGE.
A soul exasperated in ills, falls out
With everything, its friend, itself.
--ADDISON.
We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of
others.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
The good man, even though overwhelmed by misfortune, loses never his
inborn greatness of soul. Camphor-wood burnt in the fire becomes all
the more fragrant.--SATAKA.
Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew
Himself, or his own virtue.
--MALLET.
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds
rise above it.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
Misfortunes are, in morals, what bitters are in medicine: each is at
first disagreeable; but as the bitters act as corroborants to the
stomach, so adversity chastens and ameliorates the disposition.--FROM
THE FRENCH.
When one is past, another care we have;
Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.
--HERRICK.
The greatest misfortune of all is not to be able to bear misfortune.
--BIAS.
I believe, indeed, that it is more laudable to suffer great
misfortunes than to do great things.--STANISLAUS.
Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.
--ALCOTT.
The less we parade our misfortunes the more sympathy we command.
--ORVILLE DEWEY.
It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of
mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally
distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves
the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of,
before that which would fall to them by such a division.--ADDISON.
We should learn, by reflecting on the misfortunes which have attended
others, that there is nothing singular in those which befall ourselves.
--MELMOTH.
Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our
friends upon them.--COLTON.
MOB.--The mob has nothing to lose, everything to gain.--GOETHE.
The mob have neither judgment nor principle,--ready to bawl at night
for the reverse of what they desired in the morning.--TACITUS.
The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.--DRYDEN.
The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it
will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you
lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.--JANE PORTER.
Inconstant, blind,
Deserting friends at need, and duped by foes;
Loud and seditious, when a chief inspired
Their headlong fury, but, of him deprived,
Already slaves that lick'd the scourging hand.
--THOMSON.
Let there be an entire abstinence from intoxicating drinks throughout
this country during the period of a single generation, and a mob would
be as impossible as combustion without oxygen.--HORACE MANN.
MODERATION.--Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in
bankruptcy.--GOETHE.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation
in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a
vice.--THOMAS PAINE.
The boundary of man is moderation. When once we pass that pale our
guardian angel quits his charge of us.--FELTHAM.