Life and Literature Part 39

527

All matches, friends.h.i.+ps, and societies are dangerous and inconvenient, where the contractors are not equal.

--_Estrange._

528

Equivocation is first cousin to a lie.

--_From the French._

529

What has been done amiss should be undone as quickly as possible.

530

Beware of errors of the mouth.

--_Hindu._

531

The man who never makes any blunders, seldom makes any good hits.

532

_Etiquette._--Good taste rejects excessive nicety; it treats little things as little things, and is not hurt by them.

533

Certain signs precede certain events.

--_Cicero._

534

AVOIDING THE SUGGESTION OF EVIL.

Sir Peter Lely made it a rule never to look at a bad picture, having found by experience that whenever he did so, his pencil took a tint from it. Bishop Home said of the above: "Apply this to bad books and bad company."

535

I am endowed by G.o.d with power to conquer all evil.

_Ursula._

536

How quickly and quietly the eye opens and closes, revealing and concealing a world!

537

OTHER'S EYES.

Achilles: This is not strange, Ulysses, The beauty that is borne here in the face The bearer knows not, but commends itself To other's eyes: nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense behold itself, Not going from itself, but eye to eye oppos'd Salutes each other.

--_Shakespeare._

538

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.

--_Mrs. Balfour._

539

Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.

--_Plautus._

540

Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they are strongest for things a long way off.

541

The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should never want a fine house nor fine furniture.

--_Franklin._

542

The eyes are the windows of the soul.