POLITICS.

There are few defects in our nature so glaring as not to be veiled from observation by politeness and good-breeding.-Stanis

laus.

Great talent and success render a man famous; great merit procures respect ; great learning, veneration; but politeness alone ensures love and affection."

To be over-polite is to be rude.-Japanese Proverb.

POLITICS. (See "PARTY.")

If ever this free people-if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.-Abraham Lincoln.

Politics is the art of being wise for others -policy of being wise for self.-Bulwer.

There is no gambling like politics.-Disraeli.

All the great and noble authors of the ancient world, meant, by the science of politics, the intelligent comprehension of man's position, and of all his relations as a member of a great nation.-In this sense, politics subordinate to themselves every department of earthly science.-A man who understands nothing of agriculture, of trade, of human nature, of past history, of the principles of law, cannot pretend to be more than a mere empiric in political legislation.-F. W. Robertson.

When connected with morality and the character and interest of a country, politics is a subject second only to religion in importance.-Charles Hodge.

To let politics become a cesspool, and then avoid it because it is a cesspool, is a double crime.-No man should be a partisan in the sense of one who votes for his party, right or wrong.-Howard Crosby. Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.-Daniel O'Connell.

Politics, however they make the intellect active, sagacious, and inventive, within a certain sphere, generally extinguish its thirst for universal truth, paralyse sentiment and imagination, corrupt the simplicity of the mind, destroy that confidence in human virtue which lies at the foundation of philanthropy and generous sacrifices, and end in cold and prudent selfishness. Channing.

It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.-Bulwer.

POLITICS.

How little do politics affect the life, the moral life of a nation. One single good book influences the people a vast deal more. -Gladstone.

Responsibility educates, and politics is but another name for God's way of teaching the masses ethics, under the responsibility of great present interests.- Wendell Phillips.

Politics in practice too often mean all for party, nothing for the people; all for policy, nothing for principle; all for office, nothing for honor; all for power, nothing for progress.

There is an infinity of political errors which, being once adopted, become principles.-Abbé Raynal.

The amelioration of the condition of mankind, and the increase of human happiness ought to be the leading objects of every political institution, and the aim of every individual, according to the measure of his power, in the situation he occupies.— A. Hamilton.

A politician-one that would circumvent God.-Shakespeare.

To be a chemist you must study chemistry; to be a lawyer or a physician you must study law or medicine; but to be a politician you need only to study your own interests.-Max O'Rell.

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.---Swift.

I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.-Goethe.

Politics is the science of exigencies.Theodore Parker.

Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government, -a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed. Cato.

The politics of courts are so mean that private people would be ashamed to act in the same way; all is trick and finesse, to which the common cause is sacrificed.Lord Nelson.

POLITICS.

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life: men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle-that of obedience to their superiors.

Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half. Wendell Phillips.

A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.You cannot, by tying an opinion to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead, nor the wounded, but among the missing.-E. P. Whipple.

Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of parties, and cannot be evaded by them.-They declaro themselves, and come out of the depths of that deep which we call public opinion.-Garfield.

I know not where to look for any single work which is so full of the great principles of political wisdom, as the laws of Moses and the history of the kings of Israel and Judah.-G. Spring.

The violation of party faith, is, of itself, too common to excite surprise or indignation.-Political friendships are so well understood that we can hardly pity the simplicity they deceive.―Junius.

Every political question is becoming a social question, and every social question is becoming a religious question.-R. T. Ely.

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation.-A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country.-The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.-J. F. Clarke.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.Pope.

For my part, though I like the investigation of particular questions, I give up what is called "the science of political economy."-There is no such science.There are no rules on these subjects, so fixed and invariable, that their aggregate constitutes a science.-I have recently run over twenty volumes, from Adam Sm th to Professor Dew, and from the whole if I were to pick out with one hand all the mere truisms, and with the other all the doubtful propositions, little would be left.-Daniel Webster.

POPULACE.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.-Bovee.

A mercantile deputation from Bordeaux, being asked by Louis XIV what should be done to advance their interests, replied, "Sire, let us alone."

There is no Canaan in politics.-As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust. Wendell Phillips.

The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart.-There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions.-E. P. Whipple.

There is scarcely anything more harmless than political or party malice. It is best to leave it to itself. Opposition and contradiction are the only means of giving it life or duration.- Witherspoon.

POPULACE.-(See "MOB.")

Nothing is so uncertain as the minds of the multitude.-Leiz.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate as reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt the air.-Shakespeare.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people, who never loved them and there may be many that they have loved, they know not wherefore: 80 that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground.-Shakespeare.

What is the people but a herd confused, a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar, and well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise? they praise and they admire they know not what, and know not whom, but as one leads the other.-Milton.

The multitude which is not brought to act as unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.-Pascal.

I will not choose what many men desire, because I will not jump with common spirits, and rank me with the barbarous multitude.-Shakespeare.

The rabble gather round the man of news, and listen with their mouths wide open; some tell, some hear, some judge of news, some make it, and he that lies most loud, is most believed.-Dryden.

The multitude is always in the wrong.Roscommon.

POPULARITY.

There are occasions when the general belief of the people, even though it be groundless, works its effect as sure as truth itself. -Schiller.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace at gates, on roads, and in markets, instructs the attentive ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously arranged.-Lavater.

This gives force to the strong, that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.-Emerson.

The public sense is in advance of private practice.-E. H. Chapin.

POPULARITY. - Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.-Carlyle. Whatever is popular deserves attention. -Mackintosh.

Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.-Penn.

A popular man soon becomes more powerful than power itself.

The great secrets of being courted, are, to shun others and to seem delighted with yourself. Bulwer.

A generous nation is grateful even for the preservation of its rights, and willingly extends the respect due to the office of a good prince into an affection for his person.-Junius.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them. Kant.

True popularity is not the popularity which is followed after, but the popularity which follows after.-Lord Mansfield.

The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken, if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.-Montaigne.

Applause waits on success; the fickle multitude, like the light straw that floats along the stream, glides with the current still, and follows fortune.-Franklin.

Be as far from desiring the popular love as fearful to deserve the popular hate; ruin dwells in both; the one will hug thee to death; the other will crush thee to destruction to escape the first, be not ambitious; avoid the second, be not seditious.-Quarles.

Those who are commended by everybody must be very extraordinary men, or, which

is more probable, very inconsiderable men. -Gréville.

I put no account on him who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.-Goethe.

It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men,-they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.-Colton.

A habitation giddy and unsure hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.-Shakespeare.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest, but the most fanatical leaders; as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.-Lamartine.

The common people are but ill judges of a man's merits; they are slaves to fame, and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of titles and large retinue. No wonder, then, that they bestow their honors on those who least deserve them.-Horace.

Glory is safe when it is deserved; it is not so with popularity; one lasts like a mosaic; the other is effaced like a crayon drawing.-Boufflers.

As inclination changes, thus ebbs and flows the unstable tide of public judgment. -Schiller.

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved: and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.-Shenstone.

O popular applause! what heart of man is proof against thy sweet seducing charms? The wisest and the best feel urgent need of all their caution in thy gentlest gales; but swell'd into a gust-who then, alas! with all his canvas set, and inexpert, and therefore heedless, can withstand thy power?Couper.

The only popularity worth aspiring after, is the popularity of the heart-the popularity that is won in the bosom of families, and at the side of death beds.-There is another, a high and far sounding popularity, which is, indeed, a most worthless article-a popularity which with its head among storms, and its feet on treacherous quicksands, has nothing to lull the agonies of its tottering existence but the hosannas of a drivelling generation.-Chalmers.

POSITION.

POSITION.-In general, it is not very difficult for little minds to attain splendid situations. It is much more difficult for great minds to attain the place to which their merit fully entitles them.-Baron de Grimm.

The higher we rise, the more isolated we become; all elevations are cold.-De Boufflers.

A great many men-some comparatively small men now-if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses. -E. H. Chapin.

From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed, the place is dignified by the doer's deed.-Shakespeare.

POSITIVENESS.-Give me a positive character, with a positive faith, positive opinions and positive actions, though frequently in error, rather than a negative character, with a doubting faith, wavering opinions, undecided actions and faintness of heart. Something is better than nothing.-C. Simmons.

Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial. Whately.

The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy, their own self-love.Pope.

Positiveness is a most absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph; if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.-Sterne.

Every one of his opinions appears to himself to be written with sunbeams.- Watts.

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because whoever would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself. -Swift.

POSSESSIONS.-No possessions are good, but by the good use we make of them; without which wealth, power, friends, and servants, do but help to make our lives more unhappy.-Sir W. Temple.

It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours. -Shakespeare.

In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should

POSTERITY.

help him to win, more often checkmate him. -Charles Buxton.

Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life-that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.-Johnson.

Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit? Why is a wish far dearer than a crown? That wish accomplished, why the grave of bliss? Because, in the great future buried deep, beyond our plans, lies all that man with ardor should pursue.— Young.

In all wordly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.-South.

One's own-what a charm there is in the words! how long it takes boy and man to find out their worth! how fast most of us hold on to them! faster and more jealously, the nearer we are to the general home into which we can take nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world. When shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions, multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call our own, is that they may be his who hath need of them?-Hughes.

POSTERITY.-We are too careless of posterity, not considering that as they are so the next generation will be.-Penn.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity"; whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.-Swift.

Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age; less portable valuables disappear.-Lord Stanley.

With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered, that he alone deserves to have any weight or influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times.-Colton.

I would much rather that posterity should inquire why no statues were erected to me, than why they were.-Cato.

Of this our ancestors complained, we ourselves do so, and our posterity will equally lament, because goodness has vanished and evil habits prevail, while human affairs grow worse and worse, sinking into an abyss of wickedness.-Seneca.]

POVERTY.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.-Colton.

If we would amend the world, we should mend ourselves, and teach our children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.-Penn.

Time will unveil all things to posterity; it is a chatterer, and speaks to those who do not question it.-Euripides.

A foreign nation is a contemporaneous posterity.-A. P. Stanley.

POVERTY. Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient. --Sidney Smith.

Poverty is the wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.-Bul

wer.

Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.-Plutarch.

Who can confess his poverty and look it in the face, destroys its sting: but a proud poor man, he is poor, indeed.-L. E. Landon.

When it is not despicable to be poor, we want fewer things to live in poverty with satisfaction, than to live magnificently with riches.-St. Ecremond

Poverty is the sixth sense.-German Proverb.

Of all the advantages which come to any young man, I believe it to be demonstrably true that poverty is the greatest.-J. G. Holland.

An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.- Thucydides.

Poverty eclipses the brightest virtues, and is the very sepulchre of brave designs, depriving a man of the means to accomplish what nature has fitted him for, and stifling the noblest thoughts in their embryo. Many illustrious souls may be said to have been dead among the living, or buried alive in the obscurity of their condition, whose perfections have rendered them the darlings of Providence, and companions of angels.-Turkish Spy.

An English judge being asked what contributed most to success at the bar, replied, "Some succeed by great talent, some by the influence of friends, some by a miracle, but the majority by commencing without a shilling."

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can tes

POVERTY.

tify: but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.-Garfield.

He is not poor that has little, but he that desires much.—Daniel.

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us; but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious, south wind, which lulls them to lotus dreams.-Ouida.

Want is a bitter and a hateful good, because its virtues are not understood; yet many things, impossible to thought, have been by need to full perfection brought; the daring of the soul proceeds from thence, sharpness of wit and active diligence; prudence at once, and fortitude it gives; and, if in patience taken, mends our lives. -Dryden.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches endless is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor.-Shakespeare.

Poverty is not always of the nature of an affliction or judgment, but is rather merely a state of life, appointed by God for the proper trial and exercise of the virtues of contentment, patience, and resignation; and for one man to murmur against God, because he possesses not the riches he has given to another, is "the wrath that killeth the foolish man, and the envy that slayeth the silly one."-Burgh.

He travels safe and not unpleasantly, who is guarded by poverty and guided by love.-Sir P. Sidney.

In proportion as nations get more corrupt, more disgrace will attach to poverty, and more respect to wealth. There are two questions that would completely reverse this order of things: "What keeps some persons poor? and what has made some others rich ?" The true answer to these queries would often make the poor man more proud of his poverty than the rich man is of his wealth, and the rich man more justly ashamed of his wealth, than the poor man unjustly is of his poverty.-Colton.

A wise man poor is like a sacred book that's never read; to himself he lives and to all else seems dead.-Decker.

Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want-the want of money. -Zimmermann.

As pauperism, in distinction from poverty, is dependence on other people for existence, and not on our own exertions, so there is a moral pauperism in the man who