Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1881 — Selected Miscellany. [ARTICLE]

Selected Miscellany.

No principle is more noble, there is none more holy, than that of true obedience. The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be. Not a mother, not a father, nor any other relative, will do so much for us as a well-directed mind. No man was born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor, though ive cap easily learn to be vicious without u teacher. A good temper, like a summer day, is the sweetener and soother of disquietude. It sheds a brightness over everything. He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will see the effect when the weaving of a life-time is unravelled. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.—Charles Dickens. Earnestness is the path to immortality, thoughtlessness the path to death. Those who are in earnest do not die; those who are thoughtless are as if dead already, A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Hearts, more or less, I suppose, most of us have, but we keep them so closecased and padlocked—we wear an outside so hard or dry— that little or none of the love that may be within, escapes to gladden those around us. And so life passes without any of the sweetening to society that comes when affection is not only felt, but expressed.