Things Thoughtful

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 1 December 1945, Page 8

Things Thoughtful

A CHEERFUL TAKER As God loveth a cheerful giv. , so He also loveth a cheerful taker, who takes hold on His gifts with a glad heart. —Donne. • * * * • <■ * JOV IN THE EVENING Thou shalt always have joy in the evening if thou has spent thy day well. —Anon. ******* ' A GERMAN PROVERB The best is oftentimes the enemj of the good, A MAN AND HIS WORK A man’s work is the man . . .What’s the man—or woman either—without the work? —Mary Webb. CONSCIENCE AND REASON Conscience is your magnetic needle, reason is your chart. —Joseph Cook. A CURE FOR PESSIMISM When i feel myself becoming pessimistic I look at a rose.—Samain. A GOOD HEART A good heart is like the sun, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course. —Shakespeare. GIVING HAPPINESS MEANS HAVING HAPPINESS Happiness is the only “cake” which we can both have and eat, for the more we give to others the more we have for ourselves. —Anon. WHAT TIME DOES Time respects little that which is made without him,.—Anon. ******* WIT AND MALICE Wit loses its respect with me when I see it in company with malice. —Sheridan. ******* SILENCE Be silent, or say something better than silence. —Pythagoras. NATURE Nature has perfections showing that she is the image of God; and faults to show that she is only an image. —Pascal. • •»•*•* LOVE AND WISDOM It is because the Divine Essence Itself is Love and Wisdom, that the universe and all things in it, subsist from heat and light; for heat corresponds to love and light corresponds to wisdom. »•**•*• THE MISFORTUNES OF OTHERS I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others. —Burke. ******* EQUAL HAPPINESS IN LOVE It’s the one fair thing in this unjust world that everyone in love is equally haopy. E. V. Lucas. ******* TOO MUCH THOUGHT OF SELF A salutary reminder to those who think of number one too much is that it is next to nothing. —Anon. ******* A COWARD It’s only a coward, man or woman, who lets a fall drive him out of the run because of mud-stains, or rents, or disfigurement,. —Gertrude Page. ALL THINGS NOT PROFITABLE For all things are not profitable for all men, neither hath every soul pleasure in every thing. —Ecclesiasticus. ******* THE ALLAY OF THE FUTURE He was not ipaimed in the spirit, though he had been sorely buffeted. His greatest ally was with him—the Future, —C. Roberts. ******* ATTAINMENT This attainment is at present beyond my reach; but with the aid of discipline and Divine grace, twelve months hence I shall be able to do things that are now impossible. —St. Theresa. • *»***« ADVERSITY Adversity is always intermittent, and, therefore, if effort is constant a man (or a nation) is bound to win. —Barr. ******* EVIL NOT NECESSARY As surely as God is good, sq s.rely there is no such thing as necessary evil. For by the religious mind, sick, ness and pain, and death, are not to be accounted evils. Moral evils are of your own making; and undoubtedly the greater part of them may be prevented. Deformities of mind, as of body, will sometimes occur. Some voluntary castaways there will always be, whom no fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve from self-destruction; but if any are losfr" for. want of care and culture there is a sin of omission in the society to which they belong. —Southey. ENVY NO MAN Look not up with envy to those above thee. Sounding titles, stately buildings, fine gardens, gilded chariots, rich equipages—what are they? They dazzle every one but the possessor. To him that is accustomed to them, they are cheap and regardless things; they supply him not with brighter images or more sublime satisfactions than the plain man may have, whose small estate may just enable him to support the charge of a simple unencumbered life. He enters heedless into his rooms of state, as you or I do under our poor sheds'. The noble paintings and costly furniture are lost on him; he sees them not; as how can it be otherwise, when by custom, a fabric infinitely more grand and finished, that of the universe, stands unobserved by the inhabitants. and the everlasting lamps of Heaven are lighted up in vain for any notice ,that mortals take of them? —Addison. THE PLEASURE OF DOING GOOD There is a satisfaction in the thought of having done what we know to be right; and there is a discomfort, amounting often to bitter and remorseful agony, in the thought of having .done what conscience tells, us to be wrong. This implies a sense of the rectitude of what is virtuous. There is instant delight in the first conception of benevolence, there is sustained delight in its continued exercise; there is consummated delight in the happy, smiling,, and prosperous result of it. Kindness and honesty and truth, are of themselves, and irrespective of their righteousness, sweet unto the taste of the inner man Malice, envy, falsehood, injustice irrespective of their wrongness, have, of themselves, the bitterness of gall and wormwood. * * * * WHAT BETTER FATE? When the wind moans without and the day dies away, And there’s snow in the air and the sky’s leaden grey, When the town becomes dull and the i country is drear, And one feels somewhat sad at the j end of the year. 1 , What better fate then, could the j; Rhynian desire, Than to sit and do nothing and gaze j' at the fire? —J. Ashby-Sterry. :