Part 46

Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.--Milton.

Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man's hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still: that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.--Cowper.

I hate hypocrites, who put on their virtues with their white gloves.--Alfred de Musset.

Such a man will omit neither family worship, nor a sneer at his neighbor. He will neither milk his cows on the first day of the week without a Sabbath mask on his face, nor remove it while he waters the milk for his customers.--George Mac Donald.

The fatal fact in the case of a hypocrite is that he is a hypocrite.--Chapin.

'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to show himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie.--Montaigne.

~Ideas.~--After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.--George Eliot.

Our ideas are transformed sensations.--Condillac.

In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.--Heinrich Heine.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.--Holmes.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.--Taine.

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.--X. Doudan.

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.--Joubert.

Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.--Voltaire.

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Idleness.~--If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.--Sydney Smith.

Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.--Spurgeon.

In idleness there is perpetual despair.--Carlyle.

Doing nothing with a deal of skill.--Cowper.

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.--Colton.

The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.--Dickens.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.--Chesterfield.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.--Jeremy Taylor.

Let but the hours of idleness cease, and the bow of Cupid will become broken and his torch extinguished.--Ovid.

~Ignorance.~--Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.--Sydney Smith.

There is no calamity like ignorance.--Richter.

'Tis sad work to be at that pass, that the best trial of truth must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceeds that of the wise. As if anything were so common as ignorance!--Montaigne.

Ignorance, which in behavior mitigates a fault, is, in literature, a capital offense.--Joubert.