Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature Part 35

Let it travel down the years, Let it wipe another's tears; Till in heaven the deed appears.

Pa.s.s it on.

A little spring had lost its way Amid the gra.s.s and fern; A pa.s.sing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn.

He walled it in, and hung with care, A ladle on the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that Toil might drink.

He pa.s.sed again; and lo! the well, By summer never dried, Had cooled ten thousand parched tongues, And saved a life beside.

--MACKAY

Evil is wrought by want of thought As well as want of heart.

--HOOD

Nature has given to men one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.--EPICTETUS

Count that day lost whose low-descending sun Views from thy hand no worthy action done.

If happiness have not her seat And centre in the breast, We may be wise or rich or great, But never can be blest.

--BURNS

A kindly act is a kernel sown, That will grow to a goodly tree, Shedding its fruit when time has flown, Down the gulf of eternity.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Into his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

--d.i.c.kINSON

It is pleasant to think, just under the snow, That stretches so bleak and blank and cold, Are beauty and warmth that we cannot know, Green fields and leaves and blossoms of gold.

Under the green hedges after the snow, There do the dear little violets grow, Hiding their modest and beautiful heads Under the hawthorn in soft, mossy beds.

Sweet as the roses, and blue as the sky, Down there do the dear little violets lie; Hiding their heads where they scarce may be seen, By the leaves you may know where the violets have been.

--MOULTRIE

The linnet is singing the wild wood through; The fawn's bounding footsteps skim over the dew.

The b.u.t.terfly flits round the blossoming tree, And the cowslip and bluebell are bent by the bee; All the creatures that dwell in the forest are gay, And why should not I be as merry as they?

--MITFORD

Do the duty which lies nearest thee!

Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

--CARLYLE

Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and n.o.ble creed.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.

--HOOPER

Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.--LONGFELLOW

Opinions shape ideals, and it is ideals that inspire conduct.--JOHN MORLEY

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself into one.--FROUDE

Not once or twice in our fair island story The path of duty was the way to glory.

--TENNYSON

Know thy work and do it, and work at it like a Hercules. One monster there is in the world--an idle man.--CARLYLE

Every evil to which we do not succ.u.mb is a benefactor. We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.--EMERSON

In every common hour of life, In every flame that glows, In every breath of being rife With aspiration or of strife Man feels more than he knows.

--W. W. CAMPBELL

Never to the bow that bends Comes the arrow that it sends; Never comes the chance that pa.s.sed: That one moment was its last.

Oh, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long, Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong.

--H. W. LONGFELLOW

Sow an act, and reap a tendency; sow a tendency, and reap a habit; sow a habit, and reap a character; sow a character, and reap a destiny.--THACKERAY

The gifts that we have, heaven lends for right using, and not for ignoring, and not for abusing.

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.--_Journal_--AMIEL

My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

--TENNYSON

True worth is in _being_, not _seeming_,-- In doing each day that goes by Some little good--not in the dreaming Of great things to do by and by.