Part 99

The first great work is that yourself may to yourself be true.--Roscommon.

In troubled water you can scarce see your face, or see it very little, till the water be quiet and stand still: so in troubled times you can see little truth; when times are quiet and settled, then truth appears.--Selden.

Men are as cold as ice to the truth, hot as fire to falsehood.--La Fontaine.

The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it. Do you go home and search for it.--Mencius.

Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of will than of habit; and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit.--Ruskin.

Forgetting that the only eternal part for man to act is man, and that the only immutable greatness is truth.--Lamartine.

Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.--Joubert.

Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.--Gray.

The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.--Cowper.

Blunt truths make more mischief than nice falsehoods do.--Pope.

Truth has rough flavors if we bite through.--George Eliot.

Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.--Goethe.

All truths are not to be repeated, still it is well to hear them.--Mme. du Deffaud.

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always avenges itself.--Auerbach.

Nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.--Charles Sumner.

Verity is nudity.--Alfred de Musset.

~Twilight.~--Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and all is gray.--Byron.

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon, like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape.--Longfellow.

Twilight gray hath in her sober livery all things clad.--Milton.

The day is done; and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver!--Longfellow.

The weary sun hath made a golden set, and, by the bright track of his fiery car, gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.--Shakespeare.

~Ugliness.~--I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was always ugly, and with a woman, that is half the battle.--Heinrich Heine.

Ugliness, after virtue, is the best guardian of a young woman.--Mme. de Genlis.

~Understanding.~--The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.--Bacon.

In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power of perceiving and conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility; the power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing them into wholes, according to a law of unity: and in its most comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension.--Coleridge.

~Unselfishness.~--The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.--Froude.

~Uprightness.~--To redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee. Solely over one man therein thou hast quite absolute control. Him redeem, him make honest.--Thomas Carlyle.

~Urbanity.~--Poor wine at the table of a rich host is an insult without an apology. Urbanity ushers in water that needs no apology, and gives a zest to the worst vintage.--Zimmermann.