Life and Literature Part 98

1354

All who know their mind do not know their heart.

1355

RESIGNATION.

Entire and perfect happiness is never Vouchsafed to man; but n.o.bler minds endeavor To keep their inward sorrows unrevealed.

With meaner spirits nothing is concealed.

Weak, and unable to conform to fortune, With rude rejoicing or complaint importune, They vent their exultation or distress.

Whate'er betides us--grief or happiness-- The brave and wise will bear with steady mind, The allotment, unforeseen and undefined, Of good or evil, which the G.o.ds bestow, Promiscuously dealt to man below.

--_Theognis, Greek._ _Translated by Frere._

1356

Life will always be, to a large extent, what we ourselves make it. Each mind makes its own little world. The cheerful mind makes it pleasant, and the discontented mind makes it miserable. "My mind to me a kingdom is" applies alike to the peasant as to the monarch.

1357

The face is the index of the mind.

--_Crabbe._

1358

It is not position, but mind, that I want, said a lady to her father, when rejecting a suitor.

1359

Those who visit foreign countries, but who a.s.sociate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs; they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home, with travelled bodies, but untravelled minds.

1360

Youthful minds, like the pliant wax, are susceptible of the most lasting impressions, and the good or evil bias they then receive is seldom if ever eradicated.

1361

Little minds are hurt by little things; great minds rise above them.

1362

n.o.blest minds are easiest bent.

--_Homer._

1363

DUTY OF MINISTERS.

My friends, the chief duty of the ministers of G.o.d, is, that they should help their brethren to the best of their fallible knowledge and feeble power. When there is a spirit of repentance; when men truly seek the means of grace; when they have ceased to be insolent and defiant in sin; when they do intend--were it but ever so faintly--to lead a new life--then

Our commission is to heal, not harm; We come not to condemn, but reconcile; We come not to compel, but call again; We come not to destroy, but edify; Nor yet to question things already done; These are forgiven; matters of the past; And range with jetsam, and with offal, thrown Into the blind sea of forgetfulness.

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

1364

One ounce of mirth is worth more than ten thousand weight of gloominess.

1365

Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.

--_Balzac._

1366

Most just it is that he who breweth mischief should have the first draught of it himself.

--_Jemmat._

1367

CONSTANTINE AND THE MISER.

Constantine the Great, born 274 A. D., in order to reclaim a miser, took a lance and marked out a s.p.a.ce of ground the size of a human body and said to him: "Add heap to heap, acc.u.mulate riches upon riches, extend the bounds of your possessions, conquer the whole world, and in a few days, such a spot as this, will be all that you will have."

1368

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

--_Shenstone._