we we discover a great deal in an object which understand to be excellent; and yet we see (we know not how much) more beyond that, which our understandings can not fully reach and comprehend. Tillotson. RIGHT ADMIRATION. Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. Thackeray. COMMENDATION. C'est en quelque sorte se donner part aux belles actions, que de les louer de bon cœur. La Rochefoucauld. POLITENESS. La politesse est à la bonté ce que les paroles sont à la pensée. Joubert. POLITENESS. Il me semble que l'esprit de politesse est une certaine attention à faire que, par nos paroles et nos manières, les autres soient contents de nous et d'eux-mêmes. Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful fire-fly whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles. Arthur Helps. GOOD SENSE AND GOOD-NATURE. Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candour, is the product of right reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there is nothing perfect in mankind. Dryden. UNSELFISH FRIENDSHIP. Convey thy love to thy friend as an arrow to the mark, to stick there; not as a ball against the wall, to rebound back to thee. Quarles. THE COURT. La cour est comme un édifice bâti de marbre; je veux dire qu'elle est composée d'hommes fort durs, mais fort polis. La Bruyère. PLACE-MEN. A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the state. Koran. BEHAVIOUR AT COURT. Il est aussi dangereux à la cour de faire les avances qu'il est embarrassant de ne les point faire. La Bruyère. FASHION. Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it. It is a sign the two things are not far asunder. Hazlitt. GOOD-BREEDING. Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. Addison. VULGARITY. Briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity there is a dreadful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. Ruskin. COMPANIONSHIP. Some men are very entertaining for a first interview; but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them very flat and monotonous: like handorgans we have heard all their tunes; but, unlike those instruments, they are not new barrelled so easily. Colton. VISITS. La plupart des visites ne sont autre chose que des inventions de se décharger sur autrui du poids de soi-même, qu'on ne saurait supporter. Nicole. SOCIABILITY. L'on est plus sociable et d'un meilleur com merce par le cœur que par l'esprit. La Bruyère. |