Part 61

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and movement, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!--Shakespeare.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!--Emerson.

In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.--Walpole.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.--Alexander Hamilton.

I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command!--Burke.

Men's natures are neither white nor black, but brown.--Charles Buxton.

He is compounded of two very different ingredients, spirit and matter; but how such unallied and disproportioned substances should act upon each other, no man's learning yet could tell him.--Jeremy Collier.

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope, the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at.--Theodore Parker.

Men are but children of a larger growth; our appetites are apt to change as theirs, and full as craving, too, and full as vain.--Dryden.

Little things are great to little men.--Goldsmith.

Man himself is the crowning wonder of creation; the study of his nature the noblest study the world affords.--Gladstone.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires.--Lamartine.

~Manners.~--A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.--Beecher.

All manners take a tincture from our own.--Pope.

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.--Emerson.

We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness.--George Eliot.

We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly.--Voltaire.

Nature is the best posture-master.--Emerson.

Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.--Johnson.

Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.--Feltham.

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure.--Emerson.

We are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.--South.

Better were it to be unborn than to be ill-bred.--Sir W. Raleigh.

Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.--Jeffrey.

Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze.--Balzac.

Comport thyself in life as at a banquet. If a plate is offered thee, extend thy hand and take it moderately; if it be withdrawn, do not detain it. If it come not to thy side, make not thy desire loudly known, but wait patiently till it be offered thee.--Epictetus.

Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and firm allies.--Bartol.

The "over-formal" often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.--Whately.