Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Izaak Walton

Angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness.

I have known a very good fisher angle diligently four or six hours for a river carp, and not have a bite.

He that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

By … scattering short apothegms and little pleasant stories,… his son was, in his infancy taught to abhor … vice.

He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping. Therefore be sure you look to that. And in the next place, look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy; therefore value it, and be thankful for it.

Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches; when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man’s girdle that they dog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly. We see but the outside of the rich man’s happiness: few consider him to be like the silk-worm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time spinning her own bowels, and consuming herself. And this many rich men do; loading themselves with corroding cares to keep what they have already got. Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and competence, and above all for a quiet conscience.

By frequent conversing with him, and scattering short apothegms, and little pleasant stories, and making useful applications of them, his son was in his infancy taught to abhor vanity and vice as monsters.