Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

FASTIDIOUSNESS.

To be happy is of far less consequence to the worshippers of fashion than to appear so: even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.Colton.

Fashion must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.-J. R. Lowell.

Cast an eye on the gay and fashionable world, and what see we for the most part, but a set of querulous, emaciated, fluttering fantastical beings, worn out in the keen pursuit of pleasure-creatures that know, own, condemn, deplore, and yet pursue their own infelicity? The decayed monuments of error! The thin remains of what is called delight!-Young.

We should conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves.-Excess either way shocks, and every wise man should attend to this in his dress as well as language; never be affected in anything, but follow, without being in too great haste, the changes of fashion. -Moliere.

Be not too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it.—Lavater.

Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last!-Colton.

FASTIDIOUSNESS.- Fastidiousness is only another form of egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth, save in the narrow well of self, will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking.-J. R. Lowell.

Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy.-Haliburton.

Like other spurious things, fastidionsness is often inconsistent with itself, the coarsest things are done, and the cruelest things said by the most fastidious people.Mrs. Kirkland.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was, from eternity, spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it.-Marcus Antoninus.

God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under his laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to his purpose. -Marcus Antoninus.

"Whosoever quarrels with his fate does not understand it," says Bettine; and among all her sayings she spoke none wiser. -Mrs. L. M. Child.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.-Shakespeare.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.-Emerson.

Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.— W. R. Alger.

A strict belief in fate is the worst kind of slavery; on the other hand there is comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers.-Epicurus.

Thought presides over all.-Fate, that dead phantom, shall vanish from action, and providence alone be visible in heaven and on earth.-Bulwer.

All things are ordered by God, but his providence takes in our free agency, as well as his own sovereignty.-Tryon Edwards.

All is created and goes according to order, yet o'er our lifetime rules an uncertain fate.-Goethe.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.-Shakespeare.

Fate! there is no fate.-Between the thought and the success God is the only agent.-Bulwer.

FAULTS. (See "IMPERFECTIONS.") He will be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault.-Fuller. If the best man's faults were written on his forehead, he would draw his hat over his eyes. Gray.

We should correct our own faults by seeing how uncomely they appear in others.— Beaumont.

This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier male up than when once it has taken air.

FAULTS.

We confess small faults, in order to insinuate that we have no great ones.- -Rochefoucauld.

You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues.Ruskin.

No one sees the wallet on his own back, though every one carries two packs, one before, stuffed with the faults of his neighbors; the other behind, filled with his own. -Old Proverb.

To reprove small faults with undue vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to kill a fly on his friend's forehead.-Anon.

People are commonly so employed in pointing out faults in those before them, as to forget that some behind may at the same time be descanting on their own.--Dilwyn.

It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as having overcome them, that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with the weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place of their birth, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there. -Pope.

If thou wouldst bear thy neighbor's faults, cast thine eyes upon thine own.- Molinos. He who exhibits no faults is a fool or a hypocrite whom we should distrust.-Joubert.

We easily forget our faults when they are known only to ourselves.-Rochefoucauld.

Observe your enemies for they first find out your faults.-Antisthenes.

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.-Fenelon.

Every one is eagle-eyed to see another's faults and deformity.-Dryden.

To acknowledge our faults when we are blamed, is modesty; to discover them to one's friends, in ingenuousness, is confidence but to proclaim them to the world, if one does not take care, is pride.-Confucius.

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others; for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will?Thomas à Kempis.

The wise man has his foibles as well as the fool.-Those of the one are known to himself, and concealed from the world;

[blocks in formation]

while those of the other are known to the world, and concealed from himself.-J. Mason.

Think of your own faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and of the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep.-Chinese Proverb.

Men are almost always cruel on their neighbors' faults, and make the overthrow of others the badge of their own ill-masked virtue.-Sir P. Sidney.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.-Collon.

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.- -Carlyle.

If you are pleased at finding faults, you are displeased at finding perfections.

Lavater.

Bad men excuse their faults; good men will leave them.-Ben Jonson.

The fault-finder-it is his nature's plague to spy into abuses; and oft his jealousy shapes faults that are not.-Shakespeare.

Ten thousand of the greatest faults in our neighbors are of less consequence to us than one of the smallest in ourselves.Whately.

The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves. -Shenstone.

easy; to do better may

To find fault be difficult.-Plutarch.

FEAR.-Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.-Sewell.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses.-Johnson.

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.-Shakespeare.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often to despise what we really fear.-Colton.

Fear guides more to duty than gratitude. -For one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, or from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the giver of all, there are thousands who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.-Goldsmith.

FEAR.

In time we hate that which we often fear.-Shakespeare.

God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope or courage.--It is a kind of bell or gong which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance on the approach of danger.-It is the soul's signal for rallying.-H. W. Beecher.

Fear on guilt attends, and deeds of darkness; the virtuous breast ne'er knows it.— Havard.

Fear nothing but what thine industry may prevent, and be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat.-It is no less folly to fear what cannot be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility of preventing.-Quarles.

Fear is the mother of foresight.-H. Taylor.

Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly.-Burke.

Fear is more painful to cowardice than death to true courage.-Sir P. Sidney.

All fear is painful, and when it conduces not to safety, is painful without use.-Every consideration, therefore, by which groundless terrors may be removed, adds something to human happiness.-Johnson.

Good men have the fewest fears.-He who fears to do wrong has but one great fear; he has a thousand who has overcome it.-Bovee.

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.-Napoleon.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.-Burke.

Fear manifested invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones.-Chesterfield.

It is only the fear of God that can deliver us from the fear of man.- Witherspoon.

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear.-Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.-Bovee.

There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust.-The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying upon God, in whom we do not believe.-Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find him.-Pascal.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism.

[blocks in formation]

Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.-Mrs. Jameson.

Fear is two-fold; a fear of solicitous anxiety, such as makes us let go our confidence in God's providence, and a fear of prudential caution, whereby, from a due estimate of approaching evil, we endeavor our own security. --The former is wrong and forbidden; the latter not only lawful, but laudable. South.

Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full, weak and unmanly, loosens every power.Thomson.

No one loves the man whom he fears.Aristotle.

FEASTING. (See "HOSPITALITY ")

It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, which makes the feast.-Clarendon.

He who feasts every day, feasts no day.C. Simmons.

The turnpike road to people's hearts, I find, lies through their mouths, or I mistake mankind.-Peter Pindar.

To pamper the body is a miserable expression of kindness and courtesy; the most sumptuous repast is "the feast of reason and the flow of soul"- an intellectual and moral treat.-C. Simmons.

He that feasts his body with banquets and delicate fare, and starves his soul for want of spiritual food, is like him that feasts his slave and starves his wife.

When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal, but man. keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. Addison.

FEELINGS. (See "SENSIBILITY.")

Our feelings were given us to excite to action, and when they end in themselves, they are cherished to no good purpose.Sandford.

Feeling in the young precedes philosophy, and often acts with a better and more certain aim.-Carleton.

Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.

FEELINGS.

Cultivate consideration for the feelings of other people if you would not have your own injured. Those who complain most of ill-usage are those who abuse others the oftenest.

The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is, tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.-Richter.

The heart of man is older than his head. The first-born is sensitive, but blind-his younger brother has a cold, but all-comprehensive glance. The blind must consent to be led by the clear-sighted, if he would avoid falling.-Ziegler.

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.

A word-a look, which at one time would make no impression-at another time wounds the heart; and like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.-Sterne.

Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.-Coleridge.

The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touched by the thorns.-Moore.

Feelings come and go, like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed and stand fast.-Richter.

Feeling does not become stronger in the religious life by waiting, but by using it.H. W. Beecher.

He who looks upon Christ through frames and feelings is like one who sees the sun on the water, and so sees it quivering and moving as the water moves.-But he that looks upon him in the glass of his word by faith, sees him forever the same.-Nottidge.

Thought is deeper than all speech; feeling deeper than all thought; soul to souls can never teach what unto themselves was taught.-Cranch.

Feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour a thousand melodies unheard before. -Rogers.

Our higher feelings move our animal nature; and our animal nature, irritated, may call back a semblance of those emotions; but the whole difference between

[blocks in formation]

nobleness and baseness lies in the question, whether the feeling begins from below or above.-F. W. Robertson.

In religion faith does not spring out of feeling, but feeling out of faith.-The less we feel the more we should trust.-We cannot feel right till we have believed.-Bonar.

The heart has often been compared to the needle of the compass for its constancy; has it ever been so for its variations?-Yet were any man to keep minutes of his feelings from youth to age, what a table of variations would they present-how numerous, how diverse, how strange !-Hare.

FICKLENESS.-Fickleness has its rise in our experience of the fallaciousness of present pleasure, and in our ignorance of the vanity of that which is absent.-Pascal.

The uncertain glory of an April day.Shakespeare.

They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change. -Ruskin.

Everything by starts, and nothing long. -Dryden.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat it ever changes with the next block.-Shakespeare.

A fickle memory is bad; a fickle course of conduct is worse; but a fickle heart and purposes, worst of all.-C. Simmons.

FICTION.-Man is a poetical anima and delights in fiction.-Hazlitt.

Fiction allures to the severe task by a gayer preface.-Embellished truths are the illuminated alphabet of larger children.Willmott.

I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history.-John Foster.

Every fiction that has ever laid strong hold on human belief is the mistaken image of some great truth.-Martineau.

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine.Channing.

The most influential books and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction.They repeat, rearrange, and clarify the lessons of life, disengage us from ourselves, constrain us to the acquaintance of others, and show us the web of experience, but with a single change.-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours struck out.-R. L. Stevenson.

FIDELITY.

The best histories may sometimes be those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever. -Macaulay.

Many works of fiction may be read with safety; some even with profit; but the constant familiarity, even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind, which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, which wants fortifying; stirs the imagination, which wants quieting; irritates the passions, which want calming; and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises. The habitual indulgence in such reading, is a silent mining mischief. Though there is no act, and no moment, in which any open assault on the mind is made, yet the constant habit performs the work of a mental atrophy-it produces all the symptoms of decay; and the danger is not less for being more gradual, and therefore less suspected.-H. More.

Fiction is not falsehood, as some seem to think. It is rather the fanciful and dramatic grouping of real traits around imaginary scenes or characters.-It may give false views of men or things, or it may, in the hands of a master, more truthfully portray life than sober history itself.Tryon Edwards.

Those who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of it by the perusal of the best selected fictions.-Whately.

FIDELITY. Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity.Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind. Cicero.

Fidelity is the sister of justice.-Horace.

His words are bonds; his oaths are oracles; his heart is as far from fraud as heaven from earth.-Shakespeare.

It goes far toward making a man faithful to let him understand that you think him so; and he that does but suspect I will deceive him, gives me a sort of right to do it.-Seneca.

Trust reposed in noble natures obliges them the more.-Dryden.

The way to fill a large sphere is to glorify a small one. There is no large sphere; you are your sphere; the man regenerate and consecrated is the lordliest thing on

176

[ocr errors]

FLATTERY.

earth, because he makes himself so.-Edward Braislin.

I am constant as the Northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmanent.-Shakespeare.

Fidelity is seven-tenths of business success.-Parton.

Faithful found among the faithless, his loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal, nor number, nor example with him wrought to swerve from truth, or change his constant mind.-Milton.

O Heaven! were man but constant, he were perfect; that one error fills him with faults.-Shakespeare.

To God, thy country, and thy friend be true, then thou'lt ne'er be false to any one. - Vaughan.

FIRMNESS.-Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success.-Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.- Chesterfield.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.-Napoleon.

The firm, without pliancy, and the pliant, without firmness, resemble vessels without water, and water without vessels.-Lavater.

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.-Longfellow.

I know no real worth but that tranquil firmness which meets dangers by duty, and braves them without rashness.--Stanislaus.

Steadfastness is a noble quality, but, unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.-Swartz.

Firmness, both in suffering and exertion, is a character which I would wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly feeble resolve.-Burns.

It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness.-Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.Rochefoucauld.

That profound firmness which enables a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.-Cockton.

The purpose firm is equal to the deed.Young.

FLATTERY.-Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.-Richter.

« PředchozíPokračovat »