Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourselves by other men’s documents; so shall you come easily by what others have laboured hard for. Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

They who provide much wealth for their children, but neglect to improve them in virtue, do like those who feed their horses high, but never train them to the manage.

The greatest flood has the soonest ebb; the sorest tempest the most sudden calm; the hottest love the coldest end; and from the deepest desire oftentimes ensues the deadliest hate. A wise man had rather be envied for providence than pitied for prodigality. Revenge barketh only at the stars, and spite spurns at that she cannot reach. An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbours. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition, and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way. Force is of no use to make or preserve a friend, who is an animal that is never caught nor tamed but by kindness and pleasure. Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.

A man should inure himself to voluntary labour, and should not give up to indulgence and pleasure; as they beget no good constitution of body, nor knowledge of the mind.

The end of life is to be like unto God; and the soul following God will be like unto Him: He being the beginning, middle, and end of all things.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear.

The tongue of a fool is the key of his counsel, which, in a wise man, wisdom hath in keeping.

If the soul be immortal, it requires to be cultivated with attention, not only for what we call the time of life, but for that which is to follow,—I mean eternity; and the least neglect in this point may be attended with endless consequences. If death were the final dissolution of being, the wicked would be great gainers by it, by being delivered at once from their bodies, their souls, and their vices; but, as the soul is immortal, it has no other means of being freed from its evils, nor any safety for it, but in becoming very good and very wise; for it carries nothing with it but its bad or good deeds, its virtues and vices, which are commonly the consequences of the education it has received, and the causes of eternal happiness or misery.