Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Trials
Plato lays it down as a principle, that whatever is permitted to befall a just man, whether poverty or sickness, shall, either in life or death, conduce to his good.
Joseph Addison.
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.Edmund Burke:
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
Quick is the succession of human events: the cares of to-day are seldom the cares of to-morrow; and when we lie down at night, we may safely say to most of our troubles, Ye have done your worst, and we shall meet no more.William Cowper.
Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity,—all but the possibility of improvement.Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Perhaps human nature meets few more sweetly relishing and cleanly joys than those that derive from successful trials.Joseph Glanvill.
Our whole endeavours are to get rid of the present evil, as the first necessary condition to happiness. Nothing, as we passionately think, can equal the uneasiness that sits so heavy upon us.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world,—we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure.
He must be very wise that can forbear being troubled at things very troublesome.John Tillotson.
