Part 20

~Credulity.~--Quick believers need broad shoulders.--George Herbert.

Let us believe what we can and hope for the rest.--De Finod.

When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect.--Joubert.

What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.--George Eliot.

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

Action is generally defective, and proves an abortion without previous contemplation. Contemplation generates, action propagates.--Feltham.

~Crime.~--If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them.--Bruyère.

Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.--Burke.

~Criticism.~--Solomon says rightly: "The wounds made by a friend are worth more than the caresses of a flatterer." Nevertheless, it is better that the friend wound not at all.--Joseph de Maistre.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism,--never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.--Charles Buxton.

The critic eye, that microscope of wit.--Pope.

Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts, than in that which is innocuous; and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave.--Ruskin.

Certain critics resemble closely those people who when they would laugh show ugly teeth.--Joubert.

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

For I am nothing if not critical.--Shakespeare.

He who stabs you in the dark with a pen would do the same with a penknife, were he equally safe from detection and the law.--Quintilian.

Silence is the severest criticism.--Charles Buxton.

All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.--Johnson.

It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.--Rufus Griswold.

The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may be safely left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.--Bovée.

There are some critics who change everything that comes under their hands to gold, but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes his ears!--J. Petit Senn.

~Cruelty.~--Cruelty, the sign of currish kind.--Spenser.

One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the by-standers cruel. How hard the English people grew in the time of Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary.--Charles Buxton.

Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.--Burns.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.--George Eliot.

~Cultivation.~--Cultivation is the economy of force.--Liebig.

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror. Hence there is the less reason to be surprised at our inability to enter fully into the feelings and characters of others. No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself will ever have a true understanding of another.--Novalis.

Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand.--Bacon.