esse toto corpore velim, ne cætera membra suum officium perdant. Quintilian. BRILLIANT THOUGHTS. Ce que nous appelons une pensée brillante n'est ordinairement qu'une expression captieuse, qui, à l'aide d'un peu de vérité, nous impose une erreur qui nous étonne. Vauvenargues. THOUGHTS LIKE FLOWERS. On dirait qu'il en est de nos pensées comme de nos fleurs. Celles qui sont simples par l'expression portent leur semence avec elles; celles qui sont doubles par la richesse et la pompe charment l'esprit, mais ne produisent rien. MAXIMS. Joubert. Peu de maximes sont vraies à tous égards. Vauvenargues. MEN OF MAXIMS. All people of broad strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims, because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality;-without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. George Eliot. READ not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse but to weigh and consider. Bacon. OPINIONS OF INDIVIDUALS. If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing the world. 7. S. Mill. IN WHAT A MAN'S GREATNESS CONSISTS. A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on fre E |