Part 29

~Erudition.~--'Tis of great importance to the honor of learning that men of business should know erudition is not like a lark, which flies high, and delights in nothing but singing; but that 't is rather like a hawk, which soars aloft indeed, but can stoop when she finds it convenient, and seize her prey.--Bacon.

~Estimation.~--A life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line,--by deeds, not years.--Sheridan.

To judge of the real importance of an individual, one should think of the effect his death would produce.--Léves.

~Eternity.~--Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.--Addison.

Eternity is a negative idea clothed with a positive name. It supposes in that to which it is applied a present existence; and is the negation of a beginning or of an end of that existence.--Paley.

~Etiquette.~--Whoever pays a visit that is not desired, or talks longer than the listener is willing to attend, is guilty of an injury that he cannot repair, and takes away that which he cannot give.--Johnson.

The forms required by good breeding, or prescribed by authority, are to be observed in social or official life.--Prescott.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety; it treats little things as little things, and is not hurt by them.--Fénelon.

The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends.--Emerson.

~Events.~--Man reconciles himself to almost any event however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling; for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of Heaven.--Humboldt.

There can be no peace in human life without the contempt of all events. He that troubles his head with drawing consequences from mere contingencies shall never be at rest.--L'Estrange.

~Evil.~--Evil is in antagonism with the entire creation.--Zschokke.

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope; and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of wisdom and love.--Channing.

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.--Bible.

If we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison.--Locke.

Not one false man but does uncountable evil.--Carlyle.

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still, it brings forth evil.--Coleridge.

The truly virtuous do not easily credit evil that is told them of their neighbors; for if others may do amiss, then may these also speak amiss: man is frail, and prone to evil, and therefore may soon fail in words.--Jeremy Taylor.

Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us.--Rousseau.

"One soweth, and another reapeth," is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--George Eliot.

If you believe in evil, you have done evil.--A. de Musset.

~Example.~--We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.--Joubert.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.--Shakespeare.

Every great example takes hold of us with the authority of a miracle, and says to us: "If ye had but faith, ye could also be able to do the things which I do."--Jacobi.

~Excellence.~--Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.--Aikin.

~Excelsior.~--Man's life is in the impulse of elevation to something higher.--Jacobi.

~Excess.~--Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance or too much of proximity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long and too short a discourse obscures our knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us.--Pascal.

O fleeting joys of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes.--Milton.