Part 69

Observation made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over fearful of a little dust.--Colton.

Each one sees what he carries in his heart.--Goethe.

~Occupation.~--The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.--Rousseau.

The busy have no time for tears.--Byron.

One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman.--Lacretelle.

~Ocean.~--Wave rolling after wave in torrent rapture.--Milton.

It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies.--Barry Cornwall.

The visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads.--Shakespeare.

~Office.~--The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors.--Walpole.

~Opinion.~--The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.--Heinrich Heine.

Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.--Socrates.

Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed?--George Eliot.

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.--Joubert.

It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.--Colton.

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.--Montaigne.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.--Voltaire.

If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.--Swift.

One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy.--Burton.

It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won.--Goethe.

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.--Mme. Roland.

~Opportunity.~--The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.--Vieland.

Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves.--Rochefoucauld.

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.--George Eliot.

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window.--Cardinal Imperiali.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.--George Eliot.

Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.--Jeremy Collier.

A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity."--Moore.

Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.--Lord Stanley.