Life and Literature Part 106

1462

Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the British make it their abode:-- They tread the billows with a steady foot.

--_Waller._

1463

To call people peculiar is only a polite way of calling them disagreeable.

--_W. S. Murphy._

1464

WORDS.

Time to me this truth has taught ('Tis a treasure worth revealing,) More offend by want of thought Than by want of feeling.

--_Charles Swain._

1465

A dog's obeyed in office.

--_Shakespeare._

1466

A bad man in office is a public calamity.

--_French._

1467

Omissions, no less than commissions, are oftentimes branches of injustice.

--_Antoninus._

1468

It has been shrewdly said, that, when men abuse us, we should suspect _ourselves_, and when they praise us, _them_.

1469

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

--_Cicero._

1470

SELF-CONFIDENCE.

Men often lose opportunities by want of self-confidence. Doubts and fears in the minds of some rise up over every event, and they fear to attempt what most probably would be successful through their timorousness; while a courageous, active man, will, perhaps with half the ability, carry an enterprise to a prosperous termination.

1471

Men spend their lives in antic.i.p.ations, 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. Past opportunities are gone; the future may never come to us.

--_Colton._

1472

To let slip a favorable opportunity is the greatest proof of imbecility.

1473

He loses all who loses the right moment.

1474

OPPORTUNITY.

Master of human destinies am I; Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait, Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts, and seas remote, and, pa.s.sing by Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late, I knock unbidden once at every gate.

If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise Before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And those who follow me, gain every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save Death, but those who doubt, or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain, and uselessly implore.

I answer not, and I return no more.

--_U. S. Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kansas._

1475

OPPORTUNITY.

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

--_Cardinal Imperiali._