ANONYMOUS
Adversity
No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.
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, skill, 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.
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.
Affliction
Come then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.
Anxiety
Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.
Death
Every minute dies a man, and one and one-sixteenth is born.
Devil
Talk of devils being confined to hell, or hidden by invisibility!—We have them by shoals in the crowded towns and cities of the world.—Talk of raising the devil!—What need for that, when he is constantly walking to and fro in our streets, seeking whom he may devour.
Disinterestedness
Men of the world hold that it is impossible to do a benevolent action, except from an interested motive; for the sake of admiration, if for no grosser and more tangible gain. Doubtless they are also convinced, that, when the sun is showering light from the sky, he is only standing there to be stared at.
Dress
The body is the shell of the soul, and dress the husk of that shell; but the husk often tells what the kernel is.
Two things in my apparel I will chiefly aim at—commodiousness and decency; more than these is not commendable; yet I hate an effeminate spruceness, as much as a fantastic disorder.—A neglected comeliness is the best ornament.
Education
The poorest education that teaches self-control, is better than the best that neglects it.
Education does not commence with the alphabet; it begins with a mother's look, with a father's nod of approbation, or a sign of reproof; with a sister's gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother's noble act of forbearance; with handfuls of flowers in green dells, on hills, and daisy meadows; with birds' nests admired, but not touched; with creeping ants, and almost imperceptible emmets; with hummingbees and glass beehives; with pleasant walks in shady lanes, and with thoughts directed in sweet and kindly tones and words to nature, to beauty, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, and to the source of all good—to God Himself!
Family
The family was ordained of God that children might be trained up for himself; it was before the church, or rather the first form of the church on earth.
Happy are the families where the government of parents is the reign of affection, and obedience of the children the submission of love.
Faults
To reprove small faults with undue vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to kill a fly on his friend's forehead.
Feasting
He that feasts his body with banquets and delicate fare, and starves his soul for want of spiritual food, is like him that feasts his slave and starves his wife.
Feelings
Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.
Cultivate consideration for the feelings of other people if you would not have your own injured. Those who complain most of ill-usage are those who abuse others the oftenest.
Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.
Gentility
Gentility is neither in birth, wealth, manner, nor fashion—but in the mind! A high sense of honor, a determination never to take a mean advantage of another, an adherence to truth, delicacy, and politeness toward those with whom we have dealings, are its essential characteristics.
Gossip
Gossip has been well defined as putting two and two together, and making it five.
An empty brain and a tattling tongue are very apt to go together; the most silly and trivial items of news or scandal fill the former and are retailed by the latter.
Narrow-minded and ignorant persons talk about persons and not things; hence gossip is the bane and disgrace of so large a portion of society.
Grave
All along the pathway of life are tombstones, by the side of which we have promised to strive for Heaven.
Guests
Let the one you would welcome to your hospitality, be one you can welcome to your respect and esteem, if not to your personal friendship.
Haste
The longest way round is the shortest way home.
Ills
The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear.
Inconsistency
Among the numberless contradictions in our nature, hardly any is more glaring than this, between our sensitiveness to the slightest disgrace which we fancy cast upon us from without, and our callousness to what is wrong in ourselves. In truth, they who are the most sensitive to the one are often the most callous to the other.
Indexes
A book without an index is much like a compass-box, without the needle, perplexing instead of directive to the point we would reach.
Indifference
Indifference never wrote great works, nor thought out striking inventions, nor reared the solemn architecture that awes the soul, nor breathed sublime music, nor painted glorious pictures, nor undertook heroic philanthropies.—All these grandeurs are born of enthusiasm, and are done heartily.
Injury
If a bee stings you, will you go to the hive and destroy it? Would not a thousand come upon you? If you receive a trifling injury, do not go about proclaiming it, or be anxious to avenge it. Let it drop. It is wisdom to say little respecting the injuries you may have received.
Ink
The colored slave that waits upon thy thought, and sends that thought, without a voice, to the ends of the earth.
Labor
The pernicious, debilitating tendencies of bodily pleasure need to be counteracted by the invigorating exercises of bodily labor; whereas, bodily labor without bodily pleasure converts the body into a mere machine, and brutifies the soul.
Leisure
Leisure is a beautiful garment, but it will not do for constant wear.
Literature
Literary dissipation is no less destructive of sympathy with the living world, than sensual dissipation. Mere intellect is as hard-hearted and as heart-hardening as mere sense; and the union of the two, when uncontrolled by the conscience and without the softening, purifying influences of the moral affections, is all that is requisite to produce the diabolical ideal of our nature.
Love
If there is anything better than to be loved, it is loving.
Luck
"Luck" is a very good word if you put a P before it.
Manners
Nothing is more reasonable and cheap than good manners.
Meditation
By meditation I can converse with God, solace myself on the bosom of the Saviour, bathe myself in the rivers of divine pleasure, tread the paths of my rest, and view the mansions of eternity.
Mind
The blessing of an active mind, when it is in a good condition, is, that it not only employs itself, but is almost sure to be the means of giving wholesome employment to others.
Nicknames
A nickname is the heaviest stone the devil can throw at a man.
Noise
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument, and less sense, and who are most loud when least lucid, should take a lesson from nature. She often gives us lightning without thunder, but never thunder without lightning.
When I was a child I used to think it was the thunder that killed people; as I grew older I found it was only the lightning that struck, and the noise of thunder was only noise.
Nonsense
A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men.
Originality
They who have light in themselves, will not revolve as satellites.
One of the best uses of originality is, to say common things in an uncommon way.
Philosophy
Every system of philosophy is little in comparison with Christianity.—Philosophy may expand our ideas of creation, but it neither inspires love to the moral character of the Creator, nor a well-groomed hope of eternal life.—At most, it can only place us on the top of Pisgah, and there, like Moses, we must die; it gives us no possession of the good land.—It is the province of Christianity to add, "All is yours."
Preaching
It is in vain for the preacher to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one-half of the world.
Proverbs
Proverbs are the cream of a nation's thought.
Reform
When error is confuted, vice reproved, and hypocrisy exposed, some are sure to complain of uncourteousness, uncharitableness, and an unchristian spirit. Such men would have been loud in their complaints, and bitter in their censure, of the prophets and apostles, and would have doubted the personal piety, and ultimate salvation, of Luther, and Knox, and Whitefield.
Resolution
The nerve which never relaxes—the eye which never blanches—the thought which never wanders—the purpose that never wavers—these are the masters of victory.
Tact
A little tact and wise management may often evade resistance, and carry a point where direct force might be in vain.
Talent is power; tact is skill.
Trouble
Sorrow comes soon enough without despondency; it does a man no good to carry around a lightning-rod to attract trouble.
Truth
If it is the truth what does it matter who says it.
Tyranny
Tyrants and oppressors, when living, are the terror of mankind; but when dead, they are the objects of general contempt and scorn. The death of Nero was celebrated by the Romans with bonfires and plays; birds ate the naked flesh of Pompey; Alexander lay unburied thirty days; but a useful and holy life is generally closed by an honorable and lamented death.
Usefulness
Think that day lost, whose low descending sun views from thy hand no worthy action done.
Vanity
Pride and vanity are forever spoken of side by side; and many suppose that they are merely different shades of the same feeling. Yet, so far are they from being akin, they can hardly find room in the same breast. A proud manwill not stoop to be vain; a vain man is so busy in bowing and wriggling to catch fair words from others, that he can never lift up his head into pride.
They who do speak ill of themselves, do so mostly as the surest way of proving how modest and candid they are.
Vivacity
Vivacity in youth is often mistaken for genius, and solidity for dulness.
Wag
One of the most silly and contemptible of men is the professed wag, whose great aim in life is to raise a laugh which might better be against himself than at his ill-timed jokes.
Waste
Waste not, want not. Wilful waste makes woful want.
Well-Doing
Constant activity in doing good, and endeavoring to make others happy, is one of the surest ways of making ourselves so.
Wishes
Wishes are the parents of large families, but the children are generally inefficient and useless.—They are the source of idle and vain dreams, and of air castles which have no solid foundation.—The idle wish sends one on a vain journey from which he gains nothing but mental emptiness and discontent with his lot, and it may be, some rebukes of conscience, if it is sharp enough to see his folly.
