Life and Literature Part 151

--_Goethe._

2094

He who is willing to work finds it hard to wait.

2095

Never be ashamed of honest work. It is far better to be a good blacksmith than a bad lawyer.

2096

YOUTH AND OLD AGE.

Youth is the seed-time, old age the harvest. If we lay nothing up for old age it will be as related in the fable; namely: A cricket came to the ant, and said, "Give me something to eat?" The ant asked, "What did you in the summer?" "I whistled," said the cricket. "Then," said the ant, "if you whistled in summer while I was working, you may dance in the winter," and gave her nothing.

2097

We are best known by what we do.

2098

One's work is the best company.

--_French._

2099

I am often tired in, but never of, my work.

--_Whitefield._

2100

We often hear of people breaking down from over-work, but nine cases out of ten they are really suffering from worry or anxiety.

--_Sir John Lubbock._

2101

Unless a man works, he cannot find out what he is able to do.

2102

I cannot abide to see men throw away their tools the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure in their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much. The very grindstone 'll go on turning a bit after you loose it.

--_George Eliot._

2103

THE TENT.

When my bier is borne to the grave And its burden is laid in the ground Think not that Rumi is there, Nor cry, like the mourners around, He is gone,--all is over--farewell!

But go on your ways again, And forgetting your own petty loss, Remember his infinite gain.

For, know that this world is a tent, And life but a dream in the night, Till death plucks the curtain apart And awakens the sleeper with light.

--_R. H. Stoddard, From the Persian._

2104

The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in the closet.

2105

FROM "EVERY DAY CHRISTIAN LIFE."

Shall I tell you what a princess wrote--the Princess Amelia, who was an aunt of our good Queen Victoria, and who after a long and painful sickness and trial died at an early age?--

"Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed and danced, I talked and sung, And proud of health, of freedom, vain, Dreamt not of sorrow, care, or pain.

Oh! then, in those bright hours of glee, I thought the world was made for me.

But when the hour of trial came, And sickness shook my feeble frame, And folly's gay pursuits were o'er, And I could sing and dance no more-- Oh! then, I thought how sad 'twould be, Were only this world made for me."

--_F. W. Farrar, D. D._

2106

A man's quarrel with the world, is only a quarrel with himself.

2107

All my theology is reduced to this narrow compa.s.s--Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners.

--_A. Alexander._