Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 65

Wisdom consists not in seeing what is directly before us, but in discerning those things which may come to pa.s.s.--TERENCE.

That man strangely mistakes the manner of spirit he is of who knows not that peaceableness, and gentleness, and mercy, as well as purity, are inseparable characteristics of the wisdom that is from above; and that Christian charity ought never to be sacrificed even for the promotion of evangelical truth.--BISHOP MANT.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.--PSALM 90:12.

WIT.--I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.

--MADAME DE SeVIGNe.

Witticisms never are agreeable, which are injurious to others.--FROM THE LATIN.

Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but G.o.d has given us wit and flavor and brightness and laughter and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle."--SYDNEY SMITH.

Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to.--BISHOP HORNE.

Wit consists in a.s.sembling, and putting together with quickness, ideas in which can be found resemblance and congruity, by which to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy.--LOCKE.

There is many a man hath more hair than wit.--SHAKESPEARE.

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there's n.o.body at home.

--POPE.

Wit does not take the place of knowledge.--VAUVENARGUES.

To place wit before good sense is to place the superfluous before the necessary.--M. DE MONTLOSIER.

WOMAN.--Honor to women! they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of man; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands.

--SCHILLER.

The world was sad!--the garden was a wild!

And man, the hermit, sigh'd--till woman smiled.

--CAMPBELL.

A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman's eyes; for G.o.d himself sits behind them.

--J.G. HOLLAND.

O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein?--RICHTER.

Seek to be good, but aim not to be great; A woman's n.o.blest station is retreat; Her fairest virtues fly from public sight; Domestic worth,--that shuns too strong a light.

--LORD LYTTLETON.

Nature sent women into the world with this bridal dower of love, for this reason, that they might be, what their destination is, mothers, and love children, to whom sacrifices must ever be offered and from whom none are to be obtained.--RICHTER.

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if s.h.i.+pwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.--WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.

A woman impudent and mannish grown Is not more loath'd than an effeminate man.

--SHAKESPEARE.

What's a table richly spread, Without a woman at its head?

--T. WHARTON.

O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

--WALTER SCOTT.

The modest virgin, the prudent wife, or the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life, than petticoated philosophers, bl.u.s.tering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.--GOLDSMITH.

If the heart of a man is depress'd with cares, The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.

--GAY.

Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity.

--BEECHER.

Not she with trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue; She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave, Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.

--E.S. BARRETT.

O loving woman, man's fulfillment, sweet, Completing him not otherwise complete!

How void and useless the sad remnant left Were he of her, his n.o.bler part, bereft.

--ABRAHAM COLES.

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into suns.h.i.+ne, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.--WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.

Women in health are the hope of the nation. Men who exercise a controlling influence--the master spirits--with a few exceptions, have had country-born mothers. They transmit to their sons those traits of character--moral, intellectual, and physical--which give stability to inst.i.tutions, and promote order, security, and justice.--DR. J.V.C.

SMITH.

Man has subdued the world, but woman has subdued man. Mind and muscle have won his victories; love and loveliness have gained hers. No monarch has been so great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not been glad to lay his best at the feet of a woman.--GAIL HAMILTON.

American ladies are known abroad for two distinguis.h.i.+ng traits (besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.--ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON.

Where is the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will?

For if she will, she will, you may depend on't, And if she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't.

I have often had occasion to remark the fort.i.tude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man and prostrate him in the dust seem to call forth all the energies of the softer s.e.x, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity.--WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself will always be the text of the life of women.--BALZAC.

All a woman has to do in this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother.--STEELE.

I have always said it--nature meant to make woman its master-piece.

--LESSING.

The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty.--ST. PIERRE.

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,--compa.s.sion and enthusiasm. By compa.s.sion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.--LAMARTINE.

The brain women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red.--HOLMES.

There is nothing by which I have, through life, more profited than by the just observations, the good opinion, and the sincere and gentle encouragement of amiable and sensible women.--ROMILLY.