Life and Literature Part 123

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

1703

What is known to three is usually known to everybody.

1704

Those who enquire much into the affairs of others are seldom capable of retaining the secret that they learn; Therefore,

Shun the inquisitive and curious man, For what he hears, he will relate again.

1705

To keep your own secrets is wisdom; but to expect others to keep them is folly.

--_Holmes._

1706

Secrets make a dungeon of the heart, and a jailer of its owner.

1707

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

--_Johnson._

1708

Be able at all times to yield your personal preference.

--_Gestfeld._

1709

Be what your friends think you are; avoid being what your enemies say you are.

1710

Wouldst thou be crowned monarch of a little world, command thyself.

1711

CONCEIT OF SELF REBUKED.

"When I was younger than I am now," says a lawyer who is still somewhat this side of middle age, "I had a position in the office of a man who has a big reputation. Naturally, I felt my responsibility. It was plain to me that the head of the firm had outlived his usefulness, and I used to feel sorry to think what would happen to him if I ever left him.

Sheer magnanimity made me overlook a lot of things.

"I wasn't treated in that office with all the deference due me, but I stood it till one day somebody went too far. Then I marched into the old gentleman's private office and laid down the law to him. I told him I wasn't going to endure such treatment another day. I was going to quit, that was what I was going to do, and I was going to quit right then and there. I unburdened my mind freely, and then I stopped to give him a chance to apologize and beg me not to ruin him by leaving. He didn't look up from his desk. He said to me in a polite kind of way, 'Please don't slam the door when you go out.'"

--_Was.h.i.+ngton Post._

1712

They that do much themselves deny, Receive more blessings from the sky.

--_Creech._

1713

SELF-DENIAL.

Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.

--_Sir Walter Scott._

1714

Two things are difficult for man to do; 'Tis to be selfish and honest, too.

1715

Give us something to admire in yourself, not in your belongings.--(To one who boasts of his ancestry.)

1716

Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking gla.s.s will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

--_Whately._

1717

Don't support yourself on others; If the column falls, where are you?