Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1886 — GEMS OF THOUGHT. [ARTICLE]

GEMS OF THOUGHT.

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.— Thales. The more a man despises himself the more he shall obtain from God.— Horace. Dost thou love life? Then waste not time, for time is the stuff that life is made of.— Franklin. It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.— Swift. Imperiousness and severity is but an ill way of treating men who have reason of their own to guide them.— Locke. Study gives strength to the mind, conversation grace; the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness.— Sir W. Temple. Every man has a paradise around him till he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. — Longfellow. A snob is that man or woman who is always pretendiug to be something better—especially richer or more fashionable—than they are.— Thackeray. Every man living shall assuredly meet with an hour of temptation, a certain critical hour which shall more especially try what mettle his heart is made of. — South. Perhaps, as a mere matter of government, a good despot would make a better government; but for the education of the people governed, a good despotism is worse than freedom with its admixture of folly.— Garfield. No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eye is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall never be the wiser —the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. — Emerson. Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; wo almost believe in our own power to attain it.— George Eliot. As gratitude is a necessary and a glorious, so also is it an obvious, a cheap and easy virtue; so obvious, that wherever there is life there is place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be grateful without expense; and so easy, that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor. — Seneca.