Wednesday, May 20, 2009

ANXIETY

ANXIETY.

Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.-Rousseau.

Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is the parent of many sins, and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, where you may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, wnat means this restless stir and commotion of mind ? Can your solicitude alter the cause or unravel the intricacy of human events ! —Blair.

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too contidcnt a security.—Burke.

ANTIQUITY

ANTIQUITY.

Consider, for example, and yon will find that almost nil the transactions in the time of Vespasian differed little from those of the present day. You there find marrying and giving in marriage, educating children, sickness, death, war, joyous holidays, traffic, agriculture, flatterers, insolent pride, suspicions, laying of| plots, longing for the death of others, newsmongers, lovers, misers, men canvassing for the consulship and for the kingdom; yet all these passed away, and are nowhere.—

Marcus Antoninus.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.—Pascal.

All those things that are now held to be of the greatest antiquity were at one time new; what we to-day hold up by example will rank hereafter as precedent.—Tacitus.

Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.— Madame Swetchine.

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.—Burke.

Time's gradual touch has mouldered into beauty many a tower, which when it frowned with all its battlements was only terrible.—

Mason.

I do by no means advise you to throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.—Chesterjield.

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other, but if they are nothing within themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.—Cotton.

It is one proof of a good education, and of

true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity.—

Mrs. Sigourney.

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that, being nothing, art everything! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity,— then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou callcdst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thvself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what half Jan uses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we forever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything ! The past is everytliing, being nothing I

Lamb.

The pyramids, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.—Puller.

A thorough-paced antiquary not only remembers what all other people have thought proper to forget, but he also forgets what all other people think is proper to remember.—

Cotton.

Antiquity! I like its ruins better than it* reconstructions.—Joubert.

Those were good old times, it may be thought, when baron and peasant feasted together. But the one could not read, and made his mark with a sword-pommel, and the other was held as dear as a favorite dog. Pure and simple times were those of our grandfathers, it may be. Possibly not so pure as we may think, however, and with a simplicity ingrained with some bigotry and a good deal of conceit.— Chapin.

Time consecrates; and what is gray with age becomes religion.—Schiller.

What subsists to-day by violence continues to-morrow by acquiescence, and is perpetuated by tradition ; till at last the hoary abuse shakes the gray hairs of antiquity at us, and gives itself out as the wisdom of ages.—

Edward Everett.

He who professes adherence to the national religion of England, on the ground that " it is the religion of his fathers," forgets, as do the hearers who applauded the sentiment, that, on this principle, the worship of Thor and Woden would claim precedence.—

BisaopWJtately.

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.—Chapin.

ANTICIPATION

ANTICIPATION.

The events we most desire do not happen ; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.—Bruyere.

He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.—Parteia.

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than expectation.—FeUham.

Suffering itself does less afflict t'r.a senses than the apprehension of suffering.—Quint/Han.

All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.—Shakespeare.

We can but ill endure, among so many sad realities, to rob anticipation of its pleasant visions.—Henry Giles.

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other, it is our own.—Colion.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises.—Shakespeare.

With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul s infinite.—Balzac.

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.—Shakespeare.

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.

Nothing is so great an adversary to those who make it their business to please as expectation.—Cicero.

The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens.—Metastasio.

I know that we often tremble at an empty

terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery.—

Schiller.

There would be few enterprises of great labor or hazard undertaken, if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages which we persuade ourselves to expect from them.—

Johnson.

Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.—Goethe.

To despond is to be ungrateful beforehand. Be not looking for evil. Often thou drainest the (jail of fear while evil is passing by thy dwelling.—Tapper.

We expect everything, and are prepared for nothing. —Madame Sioetchine.

Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.—

Johnson.

We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.—Henry Home.

A man's desires always disappoint him; for though he meets with something that gives him satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers his expectation.—Rochefoucauld.

There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it in your expecting evil before it arrives !—Seneca.

What need a man forestall his date of grief,

and run to meet what he would most avoid ? —

Milton.

It is expectation makes a blessing dear; heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.—John Suckling.

It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.—

Bruyere.

Things temporal are sweeter in the expectation, things eternal are sweeter in the fruition; the first shames thy hope, the second crowns it; it is a vain journey, whose end affords less pleasure than the way.—Quartet.

ANGLING

ANGLING.

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did "; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.—Izaak Walton.

The pleasantest angling is to see the fish cat with her golden oars the silver stream, and greedily devour the treacherous bait.—

Shakespeare.

Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure docs not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.—

Buiwer Lytton.

Angling is somewhat like poetry; men are to be born so.—Izaak Walton.

ANGER

ANGER.

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.— W. R. Alyer.

Anger is an affected madness, compounded of pride and folly, and an intention to do com monly more mischief than it can bring to pnss; and, without doubt, of all passions which actually disturb the mind of man, it is most in our power to extinguish, at least, to suppress and correct, oar anger.—Clarendon.

Anger is like a full-hot horse, who being allowed his way, self-mettle tires him.—

Shakespeare.

Anger is like the waves of a troubled sea ; when it is corrected with a soft reply, as with a little strand, it retires, and leaves nothing behind but froth and shells, — no permanent mischief.—Jeremy Taylor.

Anger causes us often to condemn in one what we approve of in another.—

Pasquier Quesnel.

Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man. It effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than any other against whom it is directed.—Clarendon.

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in fit of passion.—Lapater.

He that would be angry and sin not must not be angry with anything but sin.—Seeker.

To be angry about trifles is mean and childish ; to rage and be furious is brutish ; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils.—Dr. Watts.

To be in anger is impiety, but who is man that is not angry ?—Shakespeare.

Arc you angry ? Look at the child who has erred, he suspects no trouble, he dreams of no harm; you will borrow something of that innocence, you will feel appeased.—Chateaubriand.

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better.—Edwards. '

When anger rushes unrestrained to action, like a hot steed, it stumbles on its way. The man of thought strikes deepest and* strikes safely.—Savage.

To be angry is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.—Pope.

He does anger too much honor, who calls it madness, which, being a distemper of the brain, and a total absence of all reason, is innocent of all the ill effects it may produce.—Clarendon.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.—

Bible.

The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.—Dryden.

An angry man who suppresses his passions thinks worse than he speaks; and an angry man that will chide speaks worse than he thinks.—Bacon.

To abandon yourself to rage is often to bring upon yourself the fault of another.—At/apet.

Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man's self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger.—Plutarch.

He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.—Salnat.

If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always cither terrible or ridiculous.—Jemny Taylor.

Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into a

froth; out malice is the wisdom of our wrath.—

Sir W. Dacenant.

An angry man opens his month and shot! up his eyes.—Goto.

Anger is a noble infirmity, the generous failing of the just, the one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogative of virtue.—

Tupper.

Never anger made good guard for itself.—
Shakespeare.


The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves, and we injure our own cause, in the opinion of the world, when we too passionately and eagerly defend it.—Cotton.

Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of an angry man.—Plutarch.

Anger is a transient hatred, or at least very like it.—South.

Anger manages everything badly.—Stadias.

Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever ; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding, — at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money ; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation .—Shenstone.

When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he always gets angry.—lluliburton.

Angry and choleric men are as ungrateful and unsociable as thunder and lightning, being in themselves all storm and tempest; but quiet and easy natures are like fair weather, welcome to all.—Clarendon.

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.—Jejfermn.

The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise ujwii our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not he revenged, and this I owe to my enemy ; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.— Cotton.

Must I give way nnd room to your rash choler ? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares ?—Shukespatrt.

Those passionate persons who carry their heart in their mouth nre rather to be pitied than feared ; their threatening* serving no other purpose than to forearm him that is threatened.— Fuller.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; nnd he that rulcth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.—VilJe.

As a conquered rebellion strengthens a government, or us health is more perfectly established by recovery from some diseases; so anger, when removed, often gives new life to affection.—Fielding.

Be ye angry, and sin not; therefore all anger is not sinful; I suppose because some de- grec of it, and upon some occasions, is inevitable. It becomes sinful, or contradicts, however, the rule of Scripture, when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long.—Paley.

Violence in the voice is often only the death- rattle of reason in the throat.—J. F. Boye».

Never forget what n man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.—Beeclier.

An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.—Pulxius Syria.

If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.—Seneca.

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then .should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger ? It is then no longer correction but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient ?—Moiitaiyne.

Anger has some claim to indulgence, and railing is usually a relief to the mind.—-Juntas.

Consider how much more vou often suffer from your anger and grief than from those very things for which you are angry an4 grieved.—Marcus Antoninus.

He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.—Plato.

When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did ihc Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.—Plutarch.

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.—Pylhayorus.

The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He s|>ends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation.—Johnson.

Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.—Locke.

A lamb, that carries anger as the flint bears fire; who, mnch enforced, shows a hasty spark, and straight is cold again.—Shakespeare.

He injures the absent who contends with an angry man.—Publius Syms.

Think when you are enraged at any one, what would probably become your sentiments ihoold he die during the dispute.—Shenstone.

Wise anger is like fire from the flint; there ii a great ado to bring it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.—

Matthew Henry.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; anger, when it is long in coming, is the stronger when it conies, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.—Quarks.

ANGELS

ANGELS.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake.

Milton.

The guardian angel of life sometimes flies so high that man cannot see it; but he always is looking down upon ns, and will soon hover nearer to us.—Richler.

They boast ethereal vigor, and are formed from seeds of heavenly birth.—Virgil.

Compare a Solomon, an Aristotle, or an Archimedes, to a child that newly begins to speak, and they do not more transcend such a one than the angelical understanding exceeds theirs, even in its most sublime improvements and acquisitions.—South.

fell.-

Angels are bright still, though the brightest .—Shakespeare.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty, but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.—Chapin.

We are never like angels till our passion dies.—Thomas Dftker.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!— Shakespeare.

ANCESTRY

ANCESTRY.

Some decent, regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural nor unjust nor impolitic.—Burke.

He who boasts of his lineage boasts of that which does not properly belong to him.—Seneca.

It is, indeed, a blessing, when the virtues of noble races are hereditary ; and do derive themselves from the imitation of virtuous ancestors. Nabb.

Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.—Lucan,

It is only shallow-minded pretenders who cither make distinguished origin a matter of personal merit, or obscure origin a matter of personal reproach. Taunt and scoffing at the humble condition of early life affect nobody in America but those who are foolish enough to indulge in them, and they are generally sufficiently punished by the published rebuke. A man who is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition.—Daniel Webster.

It is of no consequence of what parents any man is born, so that he be a man of merit.—

Horace.

The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marl- borough ; but I exhort them to consider the " Faerie Queenc," as the most priceless jewel of their coronet.—Gibbon.

Pride, in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.—Zimmermann.

He that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. No person ercr lived for our honor ; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being ; for what advantage can it be to a blind man to know that his parents had good eyes ' Does he see one whit the better ?—Cnarron.

Philosophy does not regtrd pedigree; she did not receive Plato as a noble, but she made him so.—Seneca.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry which nourishes only a weak pndc; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and grovelling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart.—Daniel Webster.

If it is fortunate to be of noble ancestry, it is not less so to be such as that people do not care to be informed whether you are noble or ignoble.—Bruyere.

We sometimes see a change of expression in our companion, and say, his father or his mother comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. In different hours, a man represents ench of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.—Emerson.

It is a shame for a man to desire honor because of his noble progenitors, and not to deserve it by his own virtue.—St. Chrysostom.

Of all vanities of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Titles, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.—Burton.

The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old ; if new, thjy would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.—Colton.

What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier 1— Walter Scott.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Vice is infamous, though in a prince, and virtue honorable, though in a peasant.—Addison.

Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.—Plato.

Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature ; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.—Lowell.

Take the title of nobility which thou hast received by birth, but endeavor to add to it another, that both may form a true nobility. There is between the nobility of thy father aiid thine own the same difference which exists between the nourishment of the evening and of the morrow. The food of yesterday will not serve thcc for to-day, and will not give thce strength for the next.—Jamakchari.

I am no herald to inquire of men's pedigrees; it suffieeth me if I know their virtues.—

Sir P. Sidney.

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves ; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions :' beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.—Seneca.

When real nobleness accompanies that imaginary one of birth, the imaginary seems to mix with real, and becomes real too.—

Lord Greville.

Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a low-born meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.—Boileau.

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.—

Percival.

The character of the reputed ancestors of gome men has made it possible for their descendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate; and there are some hereditary strokes of character by which a family may be as clearlv distinguished as by the blackest features of the human face.—Junius.

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.

Hosea Ballou.

Let him speak of his own deeds, and not of those of his forefathers. High birth is mere accident, and not virtue ; for if reason had controlled birth, and given empire only to the worthy, perhaps Arbaccs would have been Xerxes, and Xerxes Arbaccs.—Metastasio.

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked on the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without "a hope of emerging from their obscurity.—Gibbon.

No man is nobler bom than another, unles* he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.—Seneca.

A soldier, such as I am, may very well pretend to govern the state when he has known to defend it. The first who was king was a fortunate soldier. Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.— Voltaire.

It has long seemed to me that it would be more honorable to our ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.—Horace Mann.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.—

Tennyson.

Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouths perpetually full of it. They swell and vapor, and you are sure to hear of their families and relations every third word.—Charron.

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce.—Barrow.

In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they arc applied ; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.

Addison.

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations arc proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.—Cotton.

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like a potato, — the only good belonging to him is underground.— Sir Thomas Overbtiry.

Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in "itself, like wealth or talent; but it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the oilier two.—J. F. Boyes.

We are very fond of some families because they can be traced beyond the Conquest, whereas indeed the farthA back, the worse, as being thv nearer allied to a race of robbers and thieves.—DeFoc.