Part 32

No falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper but returns of force to its own likeness.--Milton.

Figures themselves, in their symmetrical and inexorable order, have their mistakes like words and speeches. An hour of pleasure and an hour of pain are alike only on the dial in their numerical arrangement. Outside the dial they lie sixty times.--Méry.

~Fame.~--Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the world.--Davenant.

Grant me honest fame, or grant me none.--Pope.

Much of reputation depends on the period in which it rises. The Italians proverbially observe that one half of fame depends on that cause. In dark periods, when talents appear they shine like the sun through a small hole in the window-shutter. The strong beam dazzles amid the surrounding gloom. Open the shutter, and the general diffusion of light attracts no notice.--Walpole.

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler.--Bulwer-Lytton.

One Cæsar lives,--a thousand are forgot!--Young.

Few people make much noise after their deaths who did not do so while they were living. Posterity could not be supposed to rake into the records of past times for the illustrious obscure, and only ratify or annul the lists of great names handed down to them by the voice of common fame. Few people recover from the neglect or obloquy of their contemporaries. The public will hardly be at the pains to try the same cause twice over, or does not like to reverse its own sentence, at least when on the unfavorable side.--Hazlitt.

Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives.--Emile Souvestre.

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it; feel it, and hate in silence.--Washington Allston.

Many have lived on a pedestal who will never have a statue when dead.--Béranger.

I hope the day will never arrive when I shall neither be the object of calumny nor ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten.--Johnson.

A man who cannot win fame in his own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True there are some half dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery.--Bulwer-Lytton.

Fame is the thirst of youth.--Byron.

Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.--Addison.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.--Thoreau.

~Fanaticism.~--Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.--Voltaire.

Painful and corporeal punishments should never be applied to fanaticism; for, being founded on pride, it glories in persecution.--Beccaria.

The false fire of an overheated mind.--Cowper.

Fanaticism is the child of false zeal and of superstition, the father of intolerance and of persecution.--J. Fletcher.

~Fashion.~--Fashion is the great governor of this world. It presides not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind. Indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at other times universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.--Fielding.

Fancy and pride seek things at vast expense.--Young.

A beautiful envelope for mortality, presenting a glittering and polished exterior, the appearance of which gives no certain indication of the real value of what is contained therein.--Mrs. Balfour.

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes,--the vulgar.--Leigh Hunt.

~Faults.~--To acknowledge our faults when we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends, in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, is pride.--Confucius.

The first fault is the child of simplicity, but every other the offspring of guilt.--Goldsmith.

~Fear.~--It is no ways congruous that God should be frightening men into truth who were made to be wrought upon by calm evidence and gentle methods of persuasion.--Atterbury.

Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage.--Sir P. Sidney.