A bad man in office is a public calamity.
Omissions, no less than commissions, are oftentimes branches of injustice.
It has been shrewdly said, that, when men abuse us, we should suspect _ourselves_, and when they praise us, _them_.
No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.
Men often lose opportunities by want of self-confidence. Doubts and fears in the minds of some rise up over every event, and they fear to attempt what most probably would be successful through their timorousness; while a courageous, active man, will, perhaps with half the ability, carry an enterprise to a prosperous termination.
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other--it is our own. Past opportunities are gone; the future may never come to us.
To let slip a favorable opportunity is the greatest proof of imbecility.
Master of human destinies am I; Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait, Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts, and seas remote, and, passing by Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late, I knock unbidden once at every gate. If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise Before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And those who follow me, gain every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save Death, but those who doubt, or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain, and uselessly implore. I answer not, and I return no more.
--_U. S. Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kansas._
There is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
_Didn't Know the Place._--A young man who left his native city to study medicine in Paris, and had been applying his time and the paternal remittances to very different purposes, received a visit from his father, who intended making a short stay in the capital to inspect its wonders. During an afternoon stroll together, the day after the elder's arrival, the father and son happened to pass in front of a large colonnaded building. "What is that?" said the senior, carelessly. "I don't know, but we'll inquire," answered the student. On the query being put to an official, he shortly replied: "That? It is the School of Medicine."