HOME.--The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate. Those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. It is indeed at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fictitious benevolence.--_Johnson._
If it were enacted that only persons of high rank should dine upon three dishes, the lower sort would desire to have three; but if commoners were permitted to have as many dishes as they pleased, whilst the nobility were limited to two, the inferior sort would not exceed that number. An order to abolish the wearing of jewels has set a whole country in an uproar; but if the order had only prohibited earrings to ladies of the first quality, other women would not have desired to wear them.--_The Reflector._
The very consciousness of being beloved by the object of our attachment, will disarm of its terrors even death itself.--_D’Israeli._
The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe of North America every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day.
Love labour; if you do not want it for food, you may for physic.
Industry often prevents what lazy folly thinks inevitable. Industry argues an ingenuous, great, and generous disposition of soul, by unweariedly pursuing things in the fairest light, and disdains to enjoy the fruit of other men’s labours without deserving it.
He who lies under the dominion of any one vice must expect the common effects of it. If lazy, to be poor; if intemperate, to be diseased; if luxurious, to die betimes, &c.
With discretion the vicious preserve their honour, and without it the virtuous lose it.