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The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.--_Lavater._
~Prudence.~--There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure.--_Rochefoucauld._
Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters.--_Whitfield._
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and s.h.i.+ps of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.--_Aristophanes._
~Punctuality.~--The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.--_Brillat Savarin._
Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Punishment.~--One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.--_Juvenal._
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastis.e.m.e.nt is a kind of medicine.--_Plato._
Punishment is lame, but it comes.--_George Herbert._
If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.--_Locke._
Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of G.o.d alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from s.h.i.+pwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-pa.s.senger swallowed by the waves?--_George Eliot._
The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.--_Goldsmith._
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.--_Cato._
The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!--_Hawthorne._
~Puns.~--I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they _ought_ to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.--_Sydney Smith._
Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense.--_Addison._
~Purposes.~--Man proposes, but G.o.d disposes.--_Thomas a Kempis._
A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.--_Bible._
It is better by a n.o.ble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we antic.i.p.ate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.--_Herodotus._
Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.--_Smiles._
~Pursuit.~--The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.--_Longfellow._
The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.--_Lady Montagu._
Q.
~Quacks.~--Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax--the folly and ignorance of mankind.--_Colton._
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine.
Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.--_Th.o.r.eau._
~Qualities.~--Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.--_Goethe._
~Quarrels.~--Coa.r.s.e kindness is, at least, better than coa.r.s.e anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.--_George Eliot._
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have pa.s.sed.--_Mme. Necker._
~Questions.~--There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?--_Johnson._
~Quotation.~--In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.--_Selden._
If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a pa.s.sion, to employ and hallow a fancy.--_Jeremy Taylor._
If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.--_Burke._
It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.--_Coleridge._
Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places.--_Hannah More._
I take memorandums of the schools.--_Swift._
The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.--_Mazzini._
To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.--_Trublet._
Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country?
Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an ill.u.s.tration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.--_Coleridge._
A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a sh.e.l.l that survives a deluge.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.--_J. Pet.i.t Senn._
As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.--_De Quincey._
R.
~Rain.~--Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.--_Roscommon._
The kind refresher of the summer heats.--_Thomson._
Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.--_Waller._
The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.--_Dryden._
~Rainbow.~--That smiling daughter of the storm.--_Colton._
Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.--_J. C. Prince._
