EPIGRAMS FROM NEW BOOKS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 13, 29 September 1909, Page 46

EPIGRAMS FROM NEW BOOKS.

The 'White Sister: F. Marion Crawford. A moralist is a person who is in earnest about other people’s morals. In this world the truth is always surprising, and generally unpleasant. 1* or one man who succeeds by wisdom ten win by daring. She smiled that little smile of superiority that even the merest girl can wear, when she is sure that she is right and the man she loves is wrong. It may bs only about sewing on a button, or about the weather, or it may concern great issues; but it is always the same when it comes; it exasperates weak men, and the stronger sort like it, as they more especially delight in all that is womanly in woman, from heroic virtue to pathetic weakness. A man is foolish who takes an important step without consulting the woman who loves him most dearly, be she mother, sister, wife, or sweetheart; but, he is rarely wise if he follows her advice, like a rule, to the letter; for no woman goes from thought to accomplishment by the same road as a man. You cannot make a pointer of a setter, nor teach a bulldog to retrieve. It is a deplorable fact that there is uotning so dull and tiresome in this world as a good example. May the gods of literature keep all good storytellers from concocting advertisements of the patent virtues! A man who is honestly convinced that he is better than his opponent is not easily put down in peaceful competition, and will risk his life in action with a gallantry and daring that command the admiration of all brave men. Only an ideal can be eternal, but every honest attempt to give it shape has a longer life than any other living creature. Nature makes only to destroy, but art creates for the very sake of preserving the beautiful. It is easy to do less than your best;; it is impossible to do more, and yet you must try to do mogp, always mortf, even to the end. Human destiny is most tragic when the men and women concerned are doing their very utmost to act bravely and uprightly, while each is in reality bringing calamity on the other. When you do not know ( wh.at a woman is looking for in an unfamiliar drawingroom, you may be sure it is a mir.or, to see whether her hat is on straight. Many a man has fought more stubbornly and bravely after a wound and a fall at the outset. A wonderful amount of physical resistance can be got -out of a moral conviction, and there is no such merciful shelter for mental dis tress as a uniform, from the full dress of a Field. Marshal to. a Sister of Charity’s cornet. It has been well said that there is nd such obstacle in life as the inert resist* •nee of a thoroughly lazy mu,;