Life and Literature Part 105

By doing nothing we learn to do ill.

--_Watts._

1449

The young are fond of novelty.

1450

So easily are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.

--_Richter._

O

1451

A CLEVER "TURN."

Lord Elibank, the Scotch peer, was told that Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, had defined oats to be food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland. "Ay," said his lords.h.i.+p, "and where else can you find such horses and such men?"

1452

_Deuteronomy xxi, 20._--"This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice."

"I well remember," says a writer on Christian education, "being much impressed by a sermon about twenty years ago, in which the preacher said, were he to select one word as the most important in education, it should be the word, obey. My experience since has fully convinced me of the justice of the remark. Without filial obedience everything must go wrong. Is not a disobedient child guilty of a manifest breach of the Fifth Commandment? And is not a parent, who suffers this disobedience to continue, an habitual partaker in his child's offense against that commandment?"

1453

_Obedience._--Obedience, promptly, fully given, is one of the most beautiful things that walks the earth.

--_Dr. Raleigh._

1454

Wise, modest, constant, ever close at hand, Not weighing, but obeying all command, Such servant by a monarch's throne may stand.

1455

An extraordinary haste to discharge an obligation is a sort of ingrat.i.tude.

--_La Rochefoucauld._

1456

Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful for them.

The proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent.

1457

To John I ow'd great obligation, But John unhappily thought fit To publish it to all the nation: Sure John and I are more than quit.

--_Prior._

1458

People newly emerged from obscurity, generally launch out into indiscriminate display.

--_Jean Ingelow._

1459

Obstinacy is will a.s.serting itself without being able to justify itself.

It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love subst.i.tuted for the tenacity of reason or conscience.

--_Amiel._

1460

Thrice happy they who have an occupation.

--_Byron._

1461

An oil-jar can be used again for nothing but oil.

(A man should follow what he was bred to.)

--_Chinese._