THINGS THOUGHTFUL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 3 December 1927, Page 4

THINGS THOUGHTFUL

STUPIDITY Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.—Schiller. * * * * A CYNIC t ■ A cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.—Oscar Wilde. « * «• # BRAVERY AND COWARDICE Recollect that a brave man dies but once, a coward all his life. —Lord Nelson. * * * * GENIUS AND TALENT Genius does what it must, aud talent docs what it can.—Lord Lytton. .*# * # THE ALLUREMENTS OE THE WORLD Let uot the cooings of tho world allure thee; Which of her lovers ever found her true ?—Young. ■)(• * # * RICHES AND POVERTY A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.—Hume. -*#■#» PESSIMISM The pessimist stops at every sewer to smell conscientiously the ovil odours. —Cantoni. UP—DOWN Two men look out through the same bars— One sees the mud, and one the stars. —Frederick Langbridgc. * * * * MENTAL DEPRESSIONS Our slightest mental depressions should warn us that wo are slipping from God.—Adelaide Hensley. • * * # * IF! IT WERE NOT FOR OTHERS The eyes of, other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither line clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture. —Benjamin Franklin. * * * * THE WONDERLESS MAN The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship) ... is but a pair of spectacles behind which thero is no eye.Carlylc. ' * * # * A STAR TO GUIDE THE HUMBLE Courage, brother! do not stumble, Tho* thy path be dark as night; There's a star to guide the humble, Trust in God and do the right. —Norman Macleod, D.D. *.* * * HUMOUR , i It is far better always to see a joke than never to see a joke, and it is, I believe absolutely trub that the man that cannot see a joke cannot sec anything that is worth ' seeing—either hoauty or Splendour or truth.—Sir William Orpen. * * * * GIVE ONLY YOUR OWN ~ Such moderation with thy bounty join That thou mayest nothing give that is not thine. That' liberality is but cast away Which makes us borrow what we cannot pay.—Sir J. Denham. * * # # GIVE THANKS Some hae meat, and canna eat, And some hae nane that want it; But we hae meat', and we can eat, And sae the' Lord be thankit. ' , —Burns. ;'■•■'/'*' *.' * '••* ■■•■■. SOME INDIAN PROVERBS £ : .), Quietness .is worth much gold. Not an atom will move without the permission of God. i That is happiness which springs: from virtue. Whom will he help that does not help his mother? Do not step down unless you know the depth. * # # * WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIETY Society is a sphere' that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands. Therefore he that retires to cells and to caverns, to stripes and to famine, to court a more arduous'conflict, and to win a richer crown, is doubly deceived; the conflict is less, the reward is nothing. He may indeed win a race, if he can be admitted to have done so who had no competitors, because he chbse to run alone, but he will be entitled to no prize because he ran out of the course.—Colton.

THE PASSPORT TO RENOWN Never be.puffed up with the thought that you know enough. Man's life is all education; aijd when he 1 has travelled through his threescore years and ten, he is still a babe in knowledgeonly at the beginning not the consummation of wisdom. Work, then—toil, strive, persevere for yourselves. The triumph of mind over matter in your Vase must be your own achievement. The tree of knowledge must wither within every individual, if he trusts to others to tend and water it for him. Self-culture is the secret of success, and the-passport to. renown.—The Rev. J. Aspinal. . : * ':..-, * ■■ * , * THE HEART IS LKE A HONEY BEE The beauty: of a summer's hour Is like the fragrance of a flower. The happy hour has long been spent, But like the flower's lingering scent So memory with fragrance glows: The heart remembereth the rose. All sweet things of the summer's store Arc ours to keep for evermore, The heart is like a honey bee.« Bringing to. cells of memory * The honey of a summer's day, There, for our need, to store away. —Estello Boughton. -■,.■' *, * * * THE ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE Books are, no doubt, the readiest roads to knowledge; but there may be a great deal'of knowledge and a great deal of taste without any extensive acquaintance with books. If I enter the premises of a working man, and find his garden deformed with weeds, his once latticed porch broken and unseemly, his walls Idiscolourcd, his hearth dirty, I know that there is little self-respect in the master of that hovel, and that he flies from his comfortless home to the nightly gratification which the alehouse supplies. But show me the trim crocus in the spring, or the georgeous dahlia in the autumn, flourishing in his neat enclosure; Jet nie see the vine, or the monthly rose, covering his cottage walls in regulated luxuriance; let me find within the neatly-sanded floor, the well-polished furniture, a few books, and a print of two over his chimney; and I am satisfied that the occupiers of that cottage have a principle at work within them which will do much to keep them from misery and degradation.—Charles Knight.