OPINION.

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing in that from which, within a few days, I might dissent myself.-Sir Thomas Browne.

Do not despise the opinion of the world; you might as well say you do not care for the light of the sun, because you can use a candle.

Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.-Tryon Edwards.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.-Rochefoucauld.

Fly no opinion because it is new, but strictly search, and after careful view, reject it if false, embrace it if 'tis true.Lucretius.

When men first take up an opinion, and then seek for reasons for it, they must be contented with such as the absurdity of it will afford.—South.

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.- Cicero.

A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty.—Emerson.

It is not only arrogant, but profligate, for a man to disregard the world's opinion of himself.— Cicero.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.-Emerson.

We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men-the lights of the world and of the present age-have given their sanction.-Daniel Webster.

In all things reason should prevail; it is quite another thing to be stiff, than to be steady in an opinion.—Penn.

As for the differences of opinion upon speculative questions, if we wait till they are reconciled, the action of human affairs must be suspended forever.-But neither

are we to look for perfection in any one man, nor for agreement among many.Junius.

That the voice of the common people is the voice of God, is as full of falsehood as of commonness.-A. Warwick.

Among the best men are diversities of opinions; which should no more, in true reason, breed hatred, than one that loves black should be angry with him that is clothed in white; for thoughts are the very apparel of the mind.-Sir P. Sidney.

Statutes are mere milestones, telling how far yesterday's thought had travelled; and the talk of the sidewalk to-day is the law of the land. With us, law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.- Wendell Phillips.

Provided we look to and satisfy our consciences, no matter for opinion; let me deserve well though I hear ill.-Seneca.

The opinions of men who think are always growing and changing, like living children. -Hamerton.

It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects.Sydney Smith.

We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality.-Joubert.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.-Jefferson. An obstinate man does not hold opinions -they hold him.-Bp. Butler.

OPPORTUNITY.-There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.Shakespeare.

Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves.-Rochefoucauld.

The secret of success in life, is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.-Disraeli.

Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him.-Bayard Taylor.

Great opportunities come to all, but many do not know they have met them.-The only preparation to take advantage of them, is simple, fidelity to what each day brings.A. E. Dunning.

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact

OPPORTUNITY.

and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement -these are the martial virtues which must command success.-Austin Phelps.

Our opportunities to do good are our talents.-C. Mather.

For truth and duty it is ever the fitting time; who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking, will never accomplish anything.-Luther.

To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. -Bacon.

If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the roadside until some one comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.-John B. Gough.

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.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.Disraeli.

Occasion may be the bugle call that summons an army to battle, but the blast of a bugle can never make soldiers nor win battles.-J. A. Garfield.

If sorrow could enter heaven, if a sigh could be heard there, or a tear roll down the cheek of a saint in light, it would be for lost opportunities, for the time spent in neglect of God which might have been spent for his glory.-Payson.

There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. comes out no richer nor greater; nay, he comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.Phillips Brooks.

He

Opportunity has hair in front; behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.-From the Latin.

The sure way to miss success is to miss the opportunity.-P. Chasles.

Who makes quick use of the moment, is a genius of prudence.-Lavater.

Turning, for them who pass, the common dust of servile opportunity to gold. Wordsworth.

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.

Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.-Jeremy Collier.

He who has opportunities to inspect the sacred moments of elevated minds, and seizes none, is a son of dulness; but he who turns those moments into ridicule, will betray with a kiss, and in embracing, murder.-Lavater.

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.

No man possesses a genius so commanding that he can attain eminence, unless a subject suited to his talents should present itself, and an opportunity occur for their development.-Pliny.

There sometimes wants only a stroke of fortune to discover numberless latent good or bad qualities, which would otherwise have been eternally concealed; as words written with a certain liquor appear only when applied to the fire.-Gréville.

Take all the swift advantage of the hours. -Shakespeare.

It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. In the same manner present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages. Life, however short, is made shorter by waste of time.-Johnson.

Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take that subtle power, the never-halting time. Wordsworth.

If we do not watch, we lose our opportunities; if we do not make haste, we are left behind; our best hours escape us, the worst are come. The purest part of our life runs first, and leaves only the dregs at the bottom; and that time which is good for nothing else we dedicate to virtue, and

OPPORTUNITY.

only propose to begin to live at an age that very few people arrive at.-Seneca.

There is need of a sprightly and vigilant soul to discern and to lay hold on favorable junctures; a man must look before him, descry opportunities at a distance, keep his eye constantly upon them, observe all the motions they make toward him, make himself ready for their approach, and when he sees his time, lay fast hold, and not let go again, till he has done his business.Charron.

Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.T. Jones.

No man possesses a genius so commanding that he can attain eminence, unless a subject suited to his talents should present itself, and an opportunity occurs for this development.-Pliny.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, makes deeds ill done !-Shakespeare.

When heaven half opens its arms, he who is faint-hearted deserves not anything.—It is this want of faith that often keeps heaven from bestowing its blessings; and even when they come down, it is apt to send them away.-Corneille.

To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.—Rochefoucauld.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.-Bacon.

How often do we sigh for opportunities of doing good, whilst we neglect the openings of Providence in little things, which would frequently lead to the accomplishment of most important usefulness!Crabbe.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.E. H. Chapin.

The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment.-Bulwer.

Opportunity to statesmen, is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work.-Suckling.

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.-Richter.

Genius and great abilities are often wanting; sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done ; others for what they would have done.Bruyère.

OPPOSITION.

To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.-Johnson. A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the matter of ages.-Carlyle. The May of life blooms only once.Schiller.

Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offered, shall never find it more.-Shakespeare.

There is an hour in each man's life appointed to make his happiness, if then he seize it.—Beaumont and Fletcher.

Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous. A great occasion is worth to a man exactly what his antecedents have enabled him to make of it.-W. Matthews.

OPPOSITION.-(See "RESOLUTION.") A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man; it is what lie wants and must have to be good for anything.-Hardship and opposition are the native soil of manhood and self-reliance.-John Neal.

The coldest bodies warm with opposition; the hardest sparkle in collision.-Junius.

He that wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.-Burke.

Nature is upheld by antagonism.-Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. -Emerson.

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it; and difficulties are but the maids of honor to set off the virtue.Molière.

It is not the victory that makes the joy of noble hearts, but the combat.-Montalemvert.

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, comes graceful and beloved as a bride-Emerson.

It is not ease but effort,-not facility, but difficulty, that makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in.life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.-S. Smiles.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success; it is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.-Emerson.

Opposition inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.-Schiller.

OPPRESSION.

OPPRESSION.-A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man. -Tacitus.

The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on; and doves will peck, in safeguard of their brood.-Shakespeare.

There is no happiness for him who oppresses and persecutes; there can be no repose for him. For the sighs of the unfortunate cry for vengeance to heaven.Pestalozzi.

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.-Burke.

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.Richard Rumbold.

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.-Burke.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. Shakespeare.

When oppression stains the robe of state, and power's a whip of scorpions in the hands of heartless knaves, to lash th' o'erburthen'd back of honest industry, the loyal blood will turn to bitterest gall, and th' o'ercharged heart explode in execration.-Shee.

The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.-Shakespeare.

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.—Seneca.

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power.-W. Pinckney.

ORATORY.-He is the eloquent man who can treat subjects of an humble nature with delicacy, lofty things impressively, and moderate things temperately.-Cicero.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be; and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.-Swift.

Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.-Feltham.

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear a fearful battle rendered you in music.-Shakespeare.

What too many orators want in depth, they give you in length.-Montesquieu.

ORATORY.

There is no power like that of true oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.-Henry Clay.

In oratory, the greatest art is to conceal art.-Swift.

An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.-Theophrastus.

When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"-Colton.

Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.-Cicero.

The effective public speaker receives from his audience in vapor, what he pours back on them in a flood.-Gladstone.

Extemporaneous speaking is, indeed, the groundwork of the orator's art; preparation is the last finish, and the most difficult of all his accomplishments. To learn by heart as a schoolboy, or to prepare as an orator, are two things, not only essentially different, but essentially antagonistic to each other; for the work most opposed to an effective oration is an elegant essay.Bulwer.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity. Cecil.

The passions are the only orators that always succeed. They are, as it were, nature's art of eloquence, fraught with infallible rules. Simplicity, with the aid of the passions, persuades more than the utmost eloquence without it.-Rochefoucauld.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature.-Shakespeare.

It is not by the compositions he learns, but by the memory of the effects he has produced that an orator is to be judged.

The language of the heart which comes from the heart and goes to the heart—is always simple, graceful, and full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language, difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it

ORDER.

easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.— · Bovee.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.—Emerson.

As thought supplies materials for disdiscourse gives precision to course, so thought as well as often assists in its evolution. The best orators owe half their inspiration to the music of their own voice. Yet profundity of ideas is commonly an impediment to fluency of words. W. B. Clulow.

In oratory, affectation must be avoided, it being better for man, by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or the inkhorn.-Lord Herbert.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing.

Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.-Bul

Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoiled child of a semi-barbarous age.-The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason; and the art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and readers wise enough to read.-Colton.

ORDER.-Order is heaven's first law.—

Pope.

A place for everything, everything in its place.-Franklin.

Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the body, so is order to all things.-Southey.

We do not keep the outward form of order, where there is deep disorder in the mind.-Shakespeare.

He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions. -Lavater.

Have a time and place for everything, and do everything in its time and place, and you will not only accomplish more, but have far more leisure than those who are always hurrying, as if vainly attempting

ORIGINALITY.

to overtake time that had been lost.Tryon Edwards.

Order is a lovely nymph, the child of beauty and wisdom; her attendants are comfort, neatness, and activity; her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, disorder.-Johnson.

Desultoriness may often be the mark of a full head; connection must proceed from a thoughtful one.-Danby.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, observe degree, priority and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom, in all line of order. -Shakespeare.

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order-that is according to their notions of the matter-and hiding things, lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. One complained that whenever his maidservant had been in his library, he could not get comfortably to work again for several days.-Hazlitt.

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.—Amiel.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace. Dryden.

Good order is the foundation of all good things.-Burke.

ORIGINALITY. (See "PLAGIARISM.")

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.-Voltaire.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.-George Eliot.

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us ; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would