DCCCCLXXI. Fame is a bubble the reserved enjoy; Who strive to grasp it, as they touch destroy: DCCCCLXXII. Young. Laziness begat wearisomeness, and this put men in quest of diversions, play and company, on which however it is a constant attendant; he who works hard, has enough to do with himself otherwise.-Bruyere. DCCCCLXXIII. I would engage to furnish you with a catalogue of English books published within the compass of seven years past, which at first hand would cost you one hundred pounds, wherein you shall not be able to find ten lines together of common grammar and common sense. -Swift. DCCCCLXXIV. All the worth of some people lies in their mighty names; upon a closer inspection, what we took for merit disappears. It was only the distance which imposed upon us before.-Bruyere. DCCCCLXXV. From our inns, a stranger might imagine that we were a nation of poets: machines at least containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents: is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrape rhyme upon windows and drinking glasses?-Mackenzie. DCCCCLXXVI. Dost thou not know the fate of soldiers? Southern. DCCCCLXXVII. Pleasure is no rule of good; since when we follow pleasure merely, we are disgusted, and change from one sort to another; condemning that at one time, which at another we earnestly approve; and never judging equally of happiness, whilst we follow passion and mere humour.-Shaftesbury. DCCCCLXXVIII. There needs no greater subtlety to prove that both benefits and injuries receive their value from the intention, when even brutes themselves are able to decide this question. Tread upon a dog by chance, or put him to pain upon the dressing of a wound; the one he passes by as an accident; and the other, in his fashion, he acknowledges as a kindness: but offer to strike at him, and though you do him no hurt at all, he flies yet in the face of you, even for the mischief that you barely meant him.-Seneca. DCCCCLXXIX. As it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy, it is the employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of superstition.-Addison. DCCCLXXX. True wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in the resemblance of words, as puns and' quibbles, of syllables, as in echoes and rhymes, or of letters, as in anagrams and acrostics. But every resemblance of ideas is not what we call wit, and it must be such a one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. Where the likeness is obvious it creates no surprise, and is not wit. Thus, when a poet tells us that the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison; but, when he adds with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows into wit.-Dryden. DCCCCLXXXI. Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.-Sterne. DCCCCLXXXII. The surest road to health, say what they will, Most of those evils we poor mortals know, DCCCCLXXXIII. Churchill. Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that, we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it. Praise of all things is the most powerful incitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.-Bruyere. DCCCCLXXXIV. The freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he: who is free makes free.-Lavater. DCCCCXXXV. If refined sense, and exalted sense, be not so useful as common sense, their rarity, their novelty, and the nobleness of their objects, make some compensation, and render them the admiration of mankind: as gold, though less serviceable than iron, acquires, from its scarcity, a value which is much superior.-Hume. DCCCCLXXXVI. Dastardly men are like sorry horses, who have but just spirit and mettle enough to be mischievous.-Pope. DCCCCLXXXVII, Sight, though the acutest of all our senses, is too dull to present us with a view of wisdom. With what ardent desires after her would she inflame us, could she become visible!-Plato. DCCCCLXXXVIII. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body com posed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.-Burke. DCCCCLXXXIX. The question is, whether you distinguish me, because you have better sense than other people, or whether you seem to have better sense than other people, because you distinguish me.-Shenstone. DCCCCXC. After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice. I have an honest lad to my tailor, who I never knew guilty of one truth, no, not when it had been to his advantage.-Montaigne. DCCCCXCI. He, who reforms himself, has done more towards reforming the public, than a crowd of noisy, impotent, patriots.-Lavater. DCCCCXCII. The greatest parts without discretion, as obanced by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner of Polyphemus, deprived of his eye, was only the mormexposed, on account of his enormous strength and stature.Hume. DCCCCXC. Were all books reduced to their quintessence, many a bulky author would make his appearance in a penny pamphlet, and there would be scarce any such thing as a folio: the works of an age would be contained on a few shelves, not to mention millions of volumes that would be utterly destroyed.-Spectator. DCCCCXCIV. People do not care to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draftment upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there.Mackenzie. DCCCCXCV. -Leave to low buffoons by custom bred, DCCCCXCVI. Stilling fleet. When there happens to be any thing ridiculous in a visage, and the owner of it thinks it an aspect of dignity, he must be of very great quality to be exempt from raillery. The best expedient therefore is to be pleasant upon himself. Steele. DCCCCXCVII. It matters not whether our good humour be construed by others into insensibility, or even idiotism; it is happiness to ourselves, and none but a fool would measure his satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.-Goldsmith. DCCCCXCVIII. A tyrant, with legions at his command, may say: Oderint modo timeant: though he is a fool if he says it, and a greater fool if he thinks it.—Chesterfield. DCCCCXCIX. The Jews are so disseminated through all the trading parts of the world, that they are become the instruments by which the most distant nations converse with one |