Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Cicero

Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in travelling, in the country.

There is not a moment without some duty.

No man should so act as to take advantage of another’s folly.

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning usefulness in which all mankind are agreed.

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy, and the dividing of our grief.

There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root and is most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.

True glory takes root, and even spreads: all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to their fellow-creatures.

Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before our time. I would ask, What time? Is it that of nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason, then, to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition you received it?

To live long, it is necessary to live slowly.

Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine, and, upon that account, must necessarily be eternal.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food is to the body.

In everything the consent of all nations is to be accounted the law of nature, and to resist it is to resist the voice of God.

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

A man would have no pleasure in discovering all the beauties of the universe, even in heaven itself, unless he had a partner to whom he might communicate his joy.

It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.

Vicious habits are so great a stain to human nature, and so odious in themselves, that every person actuated by right reason would avoid them, though he were sure they would be always concealed both from God and man, and had no future punishment entailed upon them.

Commoditas homines studiosos invitavit librorum indices comparare, quibus minimo labore ad id quod quisque quæreret, tanquam manu duceretur.

But if I err in believing that the souls of men are immortal, I willingly err; nor while I live would I wish to have this delightful error extorted from me; and if after death I shall feel nothing, as some minute philosophers think, I am not afraid lest dead philosophers should laugh at me for the error.

When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising; I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal.

There is, I know not how, in minds a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence: this has the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exulted souls.