Part 31

Glances are the first billets-doux of love.--Ninon de L'Enclos.

~Face.~--A February face, so full of frost, of storms, and cloudiness.--Shakespeare.

Demons in act, but gods at least in face.--Byron.

A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth, as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather: what is she to believe in, if not in this vision woven from within?--George Eliot.

The worst of faces still is a human face.--Lavater.

~Fact.~--There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, and pure invention is but the talent of a deceiver.--Byron.

Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is accurately stated; how almost invariably when a story has passed through the mind of a third person it becomes, so far as regards the impression that it makes in further repetitions, little better than a falsehood; and this, too, though the narrator be the most truth-seeking person in existence.--Hawthorne.

~Faction.~--A feeble government produces more factions than an oppressive one.--Fisher Ames.

It is the demon of discord armed with the power to do endless mischief, and intent alone on destroying whatever opposes its progress.--Crabbe.

~Failure.~--But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail!--Shakespeare.

Albeit failure in any cause produces a correspondent misery in the soul, yet it is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully eschew.--Keats.

Every failure is a step to success; every detection of what is false directs us toward what is true; every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so, but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth.--Whewell.

~Faith.~--In affairs of this world men are saved not by faith but by the want of it.--Fielding.

All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before one single word,--faith.--Napoleon.

O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!--Milton.

Life grows dark as we go on, till only one clear light is left shining on it, and that is faith.--Madame Swetchine.

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.--Rousseau.

Flatter not thyself in thy faith to God, if thou wantest charity for thy neighbor; and think not thou hast charity for thy neighbor, if thou wantest faith to God: where they are not both together, they are both wanting; they are both dead if once divided.--Quarles.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.--Froude.

The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief.--G. H. Lewes.

~Falsehood.~--Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality.--Colton.

Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and accidental, but they are ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that: and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them, without one care as to which is largest or blackest.--Ruskin.

It is more from carelessness about the truth, than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.--Johnson.

Falsehood and fraud shoot up in every soil, the product of all climes.--Addison.

Round dealing is the honor of man's nature; and a mixture of falsehood is like alloy in gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.--Lord Bacon.

To lapse in fullness is sorer than to lie for need: and falsehood is worse in king than beggar.--Shakespeare.

A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.--Montaigne.

The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.--Pope.