Life and Literature Part 44

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile--a feast without a welcome Are not flowers the stars of the earth? and are not the stars we see at night the flowers of heaven?

600

It is my faith that every flower which blows Enjoys the air it breathes.

--_Wordsworth._

601

How many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

--_Gray._

602

I never cast a flower away, The gift of one who cared for me; A little flower--a faded flower, But it was done reluctantly.

--_L. E. Landon._

603

Flowers are the pledges of fruit.

--_From the Danish._

604

He who gives advice to a fool, beats the air with a stick.

605

None is a fool always, everyone sometimes.

606

_Infallible Test._--A theological student, supposed to be deficient in judgment, was asked by a professor, in the course of a cla.s.s examination, "Pray, how would you discover a fool?" "By the questions he would ask," was the rather stunning reply.

607

One never needs one's wits so much as when one has to do with a fool.

608

Nothing is so silly as to insist on being the only person who is right.

609

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester.

610

If all fools wore white caps, the majority of us would look like a flock of geese.

611

Young folks tell what they do, old ones what they have done, and the others (fools) what they intend to do.

612

Where force prevails, right perishes.

--_Spanish._

613

If there is a harvest ahead, even a distant one, it is poor thrift to be stingy of your seed-corn!

--_Carlyle._

614

A FOREST IDYL.

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes and cares To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm To thy sick heart.

--_Bryant._

615

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.