Part 63

A boy was once asked what meekness was. He thought for a moment and said, "Meekness gives smooth answers to rough questions."--Mrs. Balfour.

~Melancholy.~--Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth?--Byron.

A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind.--Dryden.

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy.--Milton.

The noontide sun is dark, and music discord, when the heart is low.--Young.

~Memory.~--Memory is what makes us young or old.--Alfred de Musset.

No canvas absorbs color like memory.--Willmott.

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.--Colton.

Joy's recollection is no longer joy; but sorrow's memory is sorrow still.--Byron.

A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble.--L. E. Landon.

And fondly mourn the dear delusions gone.--Prior.

How can such deep-imprinted images sleep in us at times, till a word, a sound, awake them?--Lessing.

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention; it is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.--Willmott.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.--Aristotle.

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.--George Eliot.

We must always have old memories and young hopes.--Arsène Houssaye.

They teach us to remember; why do not they teach us to forget? There is not a man living who has not, some time in his life, admitted that memory was as much of a curse as a blessing.--F. A. Durivage.

~Mercy.~--Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice!--Longfellow.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.--Shakespeare.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.--Shakespeare.

Give money, but never lend it. Giving it only makes a man ungrateful; lending it makes him an enemy.--Dumas.

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,--not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment-seat.--Chapin.

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.--George Eliot.

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.--Cervantes.

~Milton.~--His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.--Macaulay.

~Mind.~--It is with diseases of the mind as with diseases of the body, we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.--Colton.

The end which at present calls forth our efforts will be found when it is once gained to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.--Johnson.

Minds filled with vivid, imaginative thoughts, are the most indolent in reproducing. Clear, cold, hard minds are productive. They have to retrace a very simple design.--X. Doudan.