Website owner: James Miller
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ON SELF-WILL
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Self-will is so ardent and active, that it will break a world
to pieces, to make a stool to sit on.
Cecil
Self-will is the source and spring of all that envy, malice,
bitterness of spirit, malcontentedness and impatience, and all
those dark passions, those inordinate desires and lusts, that
reign in the hearts and lives of wicked men.
J. Smith
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ON CRUELTY
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All cruelty springs from hard-heartedness and weakness.
Seneca
Cruelty and fear shake hands together.
Balzac
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motives outside of
itself; it only requires opportunity.
George Eliot
One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the by-
standers cruel.
Buxton
Man's cruelty to man makes countless thousands mourn.
Burns
Detested sport, that owes its pleasures to another's pain.
Cowper
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ON LUXURY
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Luxury makes a man so soft that it is hard to please him and
easy to trouble him; so his pleasures at last become his
burden. Luxury is a nice master, hard to be pleased.
Mackenzie
Fell luxury! More perilous to youth than storms or quicksands,
poverty or chains.
H. More
Avarice and luxury, those pests which have ever been the ruin
of every great state.
Livy
It was a shrewd saying, whoever said it, "The man who first
bought ruin on the Roman people was he who pampered them by
largesses and amusements."
Plutarch
Luxury is the first, second and third cause of the ruin of
republics. It is the vampire which soothes us into a fatal
slumber while it sucks the life-blood of our veins.
Payson
On the soft bed of luxury most kingdoms have expired.
Young
Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we
supplied with everything that nature can demand then we sit
down to contrive artificial appetites.
Johnson
Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress,
furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive
diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the
principles and judgments of men and women there is no knowing
where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral or
political, they will lead us.
John Adams
War destroys men, but luxury destroys mankind; at once corrupts
the body and the mind.
Crown
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ON PROSPERITY
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Prosperity's right hand is industry, and her left hand is
frugality.
Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less
difficult to bear misfortunes, than to remain uncorrupted by
pleasure.
Tacitus
Prosperity has this property: it puffs up narrow souls, makes
them imagine themselves high and mighty, and looks down upon
the world with contempt; but a truly noble and resolved spirit
appears greatest in distress, and then becomes more bright and
conspicuous.
Plutarch
Who feels no ills, should, therefore fear them; and when
fortune smiles, be doubly cautious, lest destruction come
remorseless on him, and he fall unpitied.
Sophocles
The virtue of prosperity is temperance, but the virtue of
adversity is fortitude; and the last is the more sublime
attainment.
Bacon
When prosperous you can number many friends; but when the storm
comes you are left alone.
Ovid
The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity,
and cast down by adversity, is generally abject and base.
Epicurus
The good things which belong to prosperity may be wished; but
the good things which belong to adversity are to be admired.
Seneca
A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people
honest, at least keeps them so.
Thackeray
Prosperity makes friends; adversity tries them.
Publius Syrus
The prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself.
Lucan
In prosperity let us take great care to avoid pride, scorn,
and arrogance.
Cicero
It appears more difficult to find a man that bears prosperity
well, than one that bears adversity well; for prosperity
creates presumption in most men, but adversity brings sobriety
to all.
Xenophon
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ON LUCK
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The only good luck many great men ever had was being born with
the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
Channing Pollock
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man,
careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of
bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are
impregnable to the assaults of all the ill-luck that fools ever
dreamed of.
Addison
Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with
keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies
in bed and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy.
Labor turns out at six o'clock and with busy pen or ringing
hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines.
Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character.
Cobden
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ON LOVE
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It is a beautiful necessity of our nature to love something.
Jerrold
We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity
-- romantic love and gunpowder.
Andre Maurois
All true love is grounded on esteem.
Duke of Buckingham
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
Longfellow
Love is the true price at which love is bought.
Love rules without a sword, and binds without a cord.
The strongest evidence of love is sacrifice.
Caroline Fry
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Goethe
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ON TRAINING OF THE MIND
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The study of mathematics cultivates the reason; that of the
languages, at the same time, the reason and the taste. The
former gives grasp and power to the mind; the latter both power
and flexibility. The former, by itself, would prepare us for a
state of certainties, which nowhere exists; the latter, for a
state of probabilities, which is that of common life. Each, by
itself, does but an imperfect work: in the union of both, is
the best discipline of the mind, and is the best mental
training for the world as it is.
Tryon Edwards
Pure mathematics do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and
faculties of individuals; for if the wit be dull, they sharpen
it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it.
Bacon
If a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics;
for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away ever so
little, he must begin again.
Johnson
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ON LAUGHTER
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Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what
they think laughable.
Goethe
Though laughter is looked upon by philosophers as the
property of reason, the excess of it has always been considered
the mark of folly.
Addison
The loud laugh, that speaks the vacant mind.
Goldsmith
The horse-laugh indicates coarseness or brutality of character.
Lavater
Wrinkle not thy face with with too much laughter, lest thou
become ridiculous; neither wanton thy heart with too much
mirth, lest thou become vain; the suburbs of folly is vain
mirth, and profuseness of laughter is the city of fools.
Quarles
Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and
ill manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their
silly joy at silly things, and which they call being merry.
Chesterfield
No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.
Richter
How often does an immoderate laughter end in a sigh!
South
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ON MODERATION
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Let your moderation be known unto all men.
Phil. 4:5
Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain
of all virtues.
Bp. Hall
The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and
tranquil.
Cicero
To live long it is necessary to live slowly.
Cicero
To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
Pascal
I knew a wise man who had for a byword, when he saw men hasten
to a conclusion, "stay a little, that we may come to the end
sooner."
Bacon
I will not be a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a
shameful, and the most heavy of all servitudes; and this end I
may gain by moderate desires.
Seneca
The true boundary of man is moderation. -- When once we pass
that pale our gardian angel quits his charge of us.
Feltham
In adversity assume the countenance of prosperity and in
prosperity moderate the temper and desires.
Livy
Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an
unstable foundation.
Seneca
The superior man wishes to be slow in his words and earnest in
his conduct.
Confucius
The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of
moderation.
Tupper
There is a German proverb that says that "Take it easy" and
"Live long" are brothers.
Bovee
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ON FEAR
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Fear is the mother of foresight.
H. Taylor
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
Burke
Fear will make thee wretched, though evil follow not behind.
M. Tupper
A man too careful of danger liveth in continual torment.
M. Tupper
Fear no ill but sin, no being but Almighty God.
Pollok
He may hope for the best who is prepared for the worst.
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its
duty, like that of other passions, in not to overbear reason,
but to assist it. -- It should not be allowed to tyrannize in
the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life
with supernumerary distresses.
Johnson
No one loves the man whom he fears.
Aristotle
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