Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 50

Precept must be upon precept.--ISAIAH 28:10.

PREJUDICE.--Prejudice is the child of ignorance.--HAZLITT.

As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.--FREDERICK DOUGLa.s.s.

Prejudice squints when it looks, and lies when it talks.--d.u.c.h.eSS D'ABRANTES.

Human nature is so const.i.tuted that all see and judge better in the affairs of other men than in their own.--TERENCE.

To all intents and purposes, he who will not open his eyes is, for the present, as blind as he who cannot.--SOUTH.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.--BANCROFT.

Prejudice may be considered as a continual false medium of viewing things, for prejudiced persons not only never speak well, but also never think well, of those whom they dislike, and the whole character and conduct is considered with an eye to that particular thing which offends them.--BUTLER.

Prejudice is the twin of illiberality.--G.D. PRENTICE.

Remember, when the judgment is weak the prejudice is strong.--KANE O'HARA.

Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world and ignorance of mankind.--ADDISON.

How immense to us appear the sins we have not committed.--MADAME NECKER.

PRESENT.--Busy not yourself in looking forward to the events of to-morrow; but whatever may be those of the days Providence may yet a.s.sign you neglect not to turn them to advantage.--HORACE.

Make use of time, if thou lovest eternity; know yesterday cannot be recalled, to-morrow cannot be a.s.sured: to-day is only thine; which if thou procrastinate, thou losest; which lost, is lost forever: one to-day is worth two to-morrows.--QUARLES.

He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has.--SCHILLER.

Abridge your hopes in proportion to the shortness of the span of human life; for while we converse, the hours, as if envious of our pleasure, fly away: enjoy, therefore, the present time, and trust not too much to what to-morrow may produce.--HORACE.

If we stand in the openings of the present moment, with all the length and breadth of our faculties unselfishly adjusted to what it reveals, we are in the best condition to receive what G.o.d is always ready to communicate.--T.C. UPHAM.

Men spend their lives in antic.i.p.ations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other--it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come.--COLTON.

Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,--as though that time should be of another make from this, which has already come and is ours.--FULLER.

Let us attend to the present, and as to the future we shall know how to manage when the occasion arrives.--CORNEILLE.

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.--MISS EDGEWORTH.

Take all reasonable advantage of that which the present may offer you.

It is the only time which is ours. Yesterday is buried forever, and to-morrow we may never see.--VICTOR HUGO.

Every day is a gift I receive from Heaven; let us enjoy to-day that which it bestows on me. It belongs not more to the young than to me, and to-morrow belongs to no one.--MANCROIX.

One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.--EMERSON.

What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored.--WHITTIER.

PRESS.--In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the Church, counted its martyrs by thousands.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

The productions of the press, fast as steam can make and carry them, go abroad through all the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder. It is an additional tongue of steam and lightning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day.--CHAPIN.

Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights.--JUNIUS.

The liberty of the press is the true measure of all other liberty; for all freedom without this must be merely nominal.--CHATFIELD.

The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race.

From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe.--WHIPPLE.

PRETENSION.--It is worth noticing that those who a.s.sume an imposing demeanor and seek to pa.s.s themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.--WHATELY.

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends.--LAVATER.

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.--SPURGEON.

True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.--CICERO.

It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.--PLUTARCH.

He who gives himself airs of importance, exhibits the credentials of impotence.--LAVATER.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.

--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.

--LAVATER.

PRIDE.--Without the sovereign influence of G.o.d's extraordinary and immediate grace, men do very rarely put off all the trappings of their pride, till they who are about them put on their winding-sheet.

--CLARENDON.

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.--LOWELL.

Of all the causes that conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

--POPE.

It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbors.--CLARENDON.

The sin of pride is the sin of sins; in which all subsequent sins are included, as in their germ; they are but the unfolding of this one.

--ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

Some people are proud of their humility.--BEECHER.