Part 76

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.--Swift.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.--Pope.

Wise men and gods are on the strongest side.--Sir C. Sedley.

The thorough-paced politician must laugh at the squeamishness of his conscience, and read it another lecture.--South.

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; an hour may lay it in the dust.--Byron.

Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.--Johnson.

~Possessions.~--It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.--Shakespeare.

All comes from and will go to others.--George Herbert.

In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.--Charles Buxton.

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.--South.

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.--Montaigne.

Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,--that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.--Johnson.

~Posterity.~--Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.--Lord Stanley.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.--Colton.

~Poverty.~--Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want--the want of money.--Zimmerman.

Few save the poor feel for the poor.--L. E. Landon.

Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.--Dante.

Riches endless is as poor as winter, to him that ever fears he shall be poor.--Shakespeare.

A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.--Goldsmith.

He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.--Daniel.

The wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Power.~--The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.--Carlyle.

Oh for a forty parson power.--Byron.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Praise.~--Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.--Colton.

Praise is the best diet for us after all.--Sydney Smith.

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.--Washington Allston.

Damn with faint praise.--Pope.