Part 45

Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health.--Cowley.

I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.--George Eliot.

Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret.--George Eliot.

Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of reveling to-day on the profits of to-morrow.--Johnson.

It is necessary to hope, though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.--Johnson.

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.--Victor Hugo.

~Humanity.~--A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds: therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.--Bacon.

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.--Burke.

Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.--Steele.

I do not know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men, but 'tis always a mortification to me to observe that there is no perfection in humanity.--Montagu.

The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Humility.~--It is from out the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, God comes in, and is everything in me.--Mountford.

Should any ask me, What is the first thing in religion? I would reply, The first, second, and third thing therein, nay all, is humility.--St. Augustine.

Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."--Plutarch.

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.--Franklin.

Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tigers' claws.--Heinrich Heine.

Trees that, like the poplar, lift upwards all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their bows.--Bulwer-Lytton.

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little and others much.--Archbishop Leighton.

~Humor.~--The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.--Coleridge.

The oil and wine of merry meeting.--Washington Irving.

These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms.--Addison.

~Hyperbole.~--Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied with hyperbole.--Bruyère.

Let us have done with reproaching; for we may throw out so many reproachful words on one another that a ship of a hundred oars would not be able to carry the load.--Homer.

~Hypocrisy.~--Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to him the outside, and reserving the inward for his enemy.--Jeremy Taylor.

Hypocrisy has become a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.--Molière.

Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal.--Swift.

Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy.--Mme. de Maintenon.

As a man loves gold, in that proportion he hates to be imposed upon by counterfeits; and in proportion as a man has regard for that which is above price and better than gold, he abhors that hypocrisy which is but its counterfeit.--Cecil.