The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps oer a cold decree: such a hare is madness, the youth, to skip oer the meshes of good counsel, the cripple.
Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another; since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no mans enmity needlessly; since any mans love may be useful, and every mans hatred is dangerous.
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.
Too many have no idea of the subjection of their temper to the influence of religion, and yet what is changed, if the temper is not? If a man is as passionate, malicious, resentful, sullen, moody, or morose after his conversion as before it, what is he converted from or to?