Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Epicurus

A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth and spreading fertility: it is therefore more delightful and more honourable to give than receive.

A wise man shall not be deprived of pleasure even when death shall summons him; forasmuch as he has attained the delightful end of the best life,—departing like a guest full and well satisfied: having received life upon trust, and duly discharged that office, he acquits himself at departing.

A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord or tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of, night and day; on the other hand, there is some comfort that God will be moved by our prayers; but this imports an inexorable necessity.

Every man should examine his own genius, and advise with himself what is proper to apply himself to; for nothing can be more distant from tranquillity and happiness than to be engaged in a course of life for which nature has rendered thee unfit; for an active life is not to be undertaken by an unactive person; nor an unactive life by an active person: to one, rest is quiet and action labour; to another, rest is labour and action quiet: a mild and timorous man should avoid a military life, a bold and impatient man the easy; for one cannot brook war, nor the other peace.

He is a pious man who, contemplating all things with a serene and quiet soul, conceiveth aright of God, and worshippeth Him in his mind: not induced thereto by hope or reward, but for His supreme nature and excellent majesty.

There is this difference between a wise man and a fool: the wise man expects future things, but does not depend upon them, and in the mean time enjoys the present, remembering the past with delight; but the life of the fool is wholly carried on to the future.