There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into compliance.-Burke. ADVERSITY.-(See "AFFLICTION.") Adversity is the trial of principle.-Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.-Fielding. Adversity is the first path to truth.Byron. No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.Anon. Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,-cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate. Walter Scott. Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then, especially, being free from flatterers.-Johnson. Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.-Plutarch. Who hath not known ill fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue.-Mallet. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the top of a mountain. So are many things learned in adversity which the prosperous man dreams not of.-Spurgeon. Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.-Leighton. I never met with a single instance of adversity which I have not in the end seen was for my good.--I have never heard of a Christian on his death bed complaining of his afflictions.-A. Proudfit. We ought as much to pray for a blessing upon our daily rod as upon our daily bread. John Owen. Heaven often smites in mercy, even when the blow is severest.-Joanna Baillie. Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.-Horace. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.-Hazlitt. The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.-Leighton. ADVERSITY. The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.-Seneca. Adversity, sage useful guest, severe instructor, but the best; it is from thee alone we know justly to value things below.Somerville. Prosperity has this property: It puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and leads them to look down upon the world with contempt; but a truly noble spirit appears greatest in distress; and then becomes more bright and conspicuous.-Plutarch. In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that does not displease us.- -Rochefoucauld. Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.-Johnson. Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.Shakespeare. The truly great and good, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm-tree, to strive most upwards when it is most burdened.-Sir P. Sidney. In this wild world, the fondest and the best are the most tried, most troubled, and distrest.-Crabbe. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.-Bacon. The sharpest sting of adversity it borrows from our own impatience.-Bp. Horne. The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of tribulation.-E. H. Chapin. He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported with the latter.-Fielding. He that has no cross will have no crown.— Adversity is a severe instructor, set over our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.Burke. Genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity; a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quicksand to virtue.-Schiller. Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all.-Mad. Swetchine. Though losses and crosses be lessons right severe, there's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where.-Burns. A smooth sea never made a skilful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, sl.ill, and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security.-Anon. A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate.Sir P. Sidney. Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious.— Anon. Adversity, like winter weather, is of use to kill those vermin which the summer of prosperity is apt to produce and nourish.Arrowsmith. He that has never known adversity, is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world; for as it surrounds us with friends, who tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom only we can learn our defects.- Colton. God kills thy comforts to kill thy corruptions: wants are ordained to kill wantonness; poverty to kill pride; reproaches to destroy ambition.-Flavel. God lays his cross upon those whom he loves, and those who bear it patiently gain much wisdom.-Luther. It is good for man to suffer the adversity of this earthly life: for it brings him back to the sacred retirement of the heart, where only he finds he is an exile from his native home, and ought not to place his trust in any worldly enjoyment.-Thomas à Kempis. So your fiery trial is still unextinguished. But what if it be but His beacon light on your upward path?-F. R. Havergal. It is not the so-called blessings of life, its sunshine and calm and pleasant experiences that make men, but its rugged experiences, its storms and tempests and trials. Early adversity is often a blessing in disguise.-W. Mathews. Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely ways, there God is hewing ont the pillars for His temple.-Phillips Brooks. The Gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.-Addison. How blunt are all the arrows of adversity in comparison with those of guilt!-Blair. ADVICE.-Let no man presume to give advice to others who has not first given good counsel to himself.-Seneca. The greatest trust between man and mar is the trust of giving counsel.-Bacon. When a man seeks your advice he generally wants your praise.- Chesterfield. Advice is a superfluity. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred people don't take it. The hundredth they do take it, but with a reservation.-Then of course it turns out badly, and they think you an idiot, and never forgive you.-L. Malet. Agreeable advice is seldom useful advice.-Massilon. He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.-Bacon. A thousand times listen to the counsel of your friend, but seek it only once.-A. S. Hardy. There is nothing of which men are more liberal than their good advice, be their stock of it ever so small; because it seems to carry in it an intimation of their own influence, importance of worth.-Young. When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.-Addison. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of twenty to follow mine own teaching.→ Shakespeare. He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with.Burke. It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.-Eschylus. The worst men often give the best advice; our thoughts are better sometimes than our deeds.-Bailey. We ask advice; we mean approbation.— Colton. Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.- Coleridge. Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman's counsel.-G. Chapman. Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.-Rochefoucauld. To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.-Goahe. Good counsels observed are chains of grace.-Fuller. Wait for the season when to cast good counsels upon subsiding passion.-Shake speare. Nothing is less sincere than our mode of asking and giving advice. He who asks seems to have deference for the opinion of his friend, while he only aims to get approval of his own and make his friend responsible for his action. And he who gives repays the confidence supposed to be placed in him by a seemingly disinterested zeal, while he seldom means anything by his advice but his own interest or reputation.-Rochefoucauid. No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own.He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.--Ben Jonson. Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.-Johnson. Every man, however wise, needs the advice of some sagacious friend in the affairs of life.-Plautus. Those who school others, oft should school themselves,-Shakespeare. We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.-W. R. Alger. They that will not be counselled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.-Franklin. AFFECTATION. It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.-Rochefoucauld. How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning?-Swift. Do not give to your friends the most agreeable counsels, but the most advantage. ous.- Tuckerman, Harsh counsels have no effect: they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.-Helvetius. The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve: we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong.-Charron. Advice and reprehension require the utmost delicacy; painful truths should be delivered in the softest terms, and expressed no farther than is necessary to produce their due effect. A courteous man will mix what is conciliating with what is offensive; praise with censure; deference and respect with the authority of admonition, so far as can be done in consistence with probity and honor. The mind revolts against all censorian power which displays pride or pleasure in finding fault; but advice, divested of the harshness, and yet retaining the honest warmth of truth, is like honey put round the brim of a vessel full of wornwood.-Even this, however, is sometimes insufficient to conceal the bitterness of the draught.-Percival. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.-Shakespeare. Giving advice is sometimes only showing our wisdom at the expense of another.— Shaftesbury. AFFECTATION.-Affectation in any part of our carriage is but the lighting up of a candle to show our defects, and never fails to make us taken notice of, either as wanting in sense or sincerity.-Locke. All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich.-Lavater. Affectation is a greater enemy to the face than the small-pox.-St. Evremond. All affectation proceeds from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses.-Sydney Smith. Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, scarcely one meets with less suc cess than affectation, which is a perpetual disguise of the real character by false appearances.-Johnson. Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, and smaller faults of our pity, but affectation appears to be the only true source of the ridiculous.—Fielding. We are never so ridiculous by the qualities we have, as by those we affect to have.Rochefoucauld. Affectation is certain deformity.-By forming themselves on fantastic models the young begin with being ridiculous, and often end in being vicious.-Blair. Affectation differs from hypocrisy in being the art of counterfeiting qualities which we might with innocence and safety be known to want.-Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation, a part of the chosen trappings of folly.-Johnson. Affectation proceeds either from vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters to gain applause, so hypocrisy sets us on the endeavor to avoid censures by concealing our vices under the appearance of their opposite virtues.-Fielding. Avoid all singularity and affectation.What is according to nature is best, while what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.Collier. Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections can only be fixed and retained by those that are real.-De Moy. Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellencies which are farthest from our attainment, because knowing our defects we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.-Johnson. Paltry affectation and strained allusions are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; but they are but the badges of ignorance or stupidity when it would endeavor to please.-Goldsmith. All false practices and affectations of knowledge are more odious than any want or defect of knowledge can be.-Sprat. Be yourself. Ape no greatness. Be willing to pass for what you are. A good farthing is better than a bad sovereign. Affect no oddness; but dare to be right, though you have to be singular.-S. Coley. Affectation lights a candle to our defects, and though it may gratify ourselves, it disgusts all others.-Lavater. AFFECTION.-There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors that make up so much of life, that anything to love or reverence becomes, as it were, a sabbath to the soul.-Bulwer. How often a new affection makes a new man. The sordid becomes liberal; the cowering, heroic; the frivolous girl, the steadfast martyr of patience and ministration, transfigured by deathless love.-E. H. Chapin. Mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lays in ambush and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade. The light inclinations of very young people are as dust compared to rocks.-Dickens. Our affections are our life.-We live by them; they supply our warmth.- Channing. The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.-Lacordaire. How sacred and beautiful is the feeling of affection in the pure and guileless soul! The proud may sneer at it, the fashionable call it a fable, the selfish and dissipated affect to despise it, but the holy passion is surely from heaven, and is made evil only by the corruptions of those it was sent to preserve and bless.-Mordaunt. Of all earthly music that which reaches farthest into heaven is the beating of a truly loving heart.-H. W. Beecher. If there is any thing that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of evil, it is a pure human love.-N. P. Willis. Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant to point us to that realm which is the real and endless home of the heart.-H. W. Beecher. The affections, like conscience, are rather to be led than driven.-Those who marry where they do not love, will be likely to love where they do not marry.-Fuller. Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.-Leigh Hunt. The heart will commonly govern the head; and any strong passion, set the wrong way, will soon infatuate even the wisest of men; therefore the first part of wisdom is to watch the affections.- Waterland. There is in life no blessing like affection; it soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues, and bringeth down to earth its native heaven: |