Lord Elibank, the Scotch peer, was told that Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, had defined oats to be food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland. "Ay," said his lordship, "and where else can you find such horses and such men?"
1452
Deuteronomy xxi, 20.—"This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice."
"I well remember," says a writer on Christian education, "being much impressed by a sermon about twenty years ago, in which the preacher said, were he to select one word as the most important in education, it should be the word, obey. My experience since has fully convinced me of the justice of the remark. Without filial obedience everything must go wrong. Is not a disobedient child guilty of a manifest breach of the Fifth Commandment? And is not a parent, who suffers this disobedience to continue, an habitual partaker in his child's offense against that commandment?"
1453
Obedience.—Obedience, promptly, fully given, is one of the most beautiful things that walks the earth.
—Dr. Raleigh.
1454
Wise, modest, constant, ever close at hand,
Not weighing, but obeying all command,
Such servant by a monarch's throne may stand.
1455
An extraordinary haste to discharge an obligation is a sort of ingratitude.
—La Rochefoucauld.
1456
Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful for them. The proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent.
1457
To John I ow'd great obligation,
But John unhappily thought fit
To publish it to all the nation:
Sure John and I are more than quit.
—Prior.
1458
People newly emerged from obscurity, generally launch out into indiscriminate display.
—Jean Ingelow.
1459
Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience.
—Amiel.
1460
Thrice happy they who have an occupation.
—Byron.
1461
An oil-jar can be used again for nothing but oil.
(A man should follow what he was bred to.)
—Chinese.
1462
Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the British make it their abode:—
They tread the billows with a steady foot.
—Waller.
1463
To call people peculiar is only a polite way of calling them disagreeable.
—W. S. Murphy.
1464
WORDS.
Time to me this truth has taught
('Tis a treasure worth revealing,)
More offend by want of thought
Than by want of feeling.
—Charles Swain.
1465
A dog's obeyed in office.
—Shakespeare.
1466
A bad man in office is a public calamity.
—French.
1467
Omissions, no less than commissions, are oftentimes branches of injustice.
—Antoninus.
1468
It has been shrewdly said, that, when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them.
1469
No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.
—Cicero.
1470
SELF-CONFIDENCE.
Men often lose opportunities by want of self-confidence. Doubts and fears in the minds of some rise up over every event, and they fear to attempt what most probably would be successful through their timorousness; while a courageous, active man, will, perhaps with half the ability, carry an enterprise to a prosperous termination.
1471
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone; the future may never come to us.
—Colton.
1472
To let slip a favorable opportunity is the greatest proof of imbecility.
1473
He loses all who loses the right moment.
1474
OPPORTUNITY.
Master of human destinies am I;
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts, and seas remote, and, passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late,
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise
Before I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And those who follow me, gain every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save Death, but those who doubt, or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,
Seek me in vain, and uselessly implore.
I answer not, and I return no more.
—U. S. Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kansas.
1475
OPPORTUNITY.
There is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
—Cardinal Imperiali.
1476
Didn't Know the Place.—A young man who left his native city to study medicine in Paris, and had been applying his time and the paternal remittances to very different purposes, received a visit from his father, who intended making a short stay in the capital to inspect its wonders. During an afternoon stroll together, the day after the elder's arrival, the father and son happened to pass in front of a large colonnaded building. "What is that?" said the senior, carelessly. "I don't know, but we'll inquire," answered the student. On the query being put to an official, he shortly replied: "That? It is the School of Medicine."
1477
The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.
—Syrus.
1478
We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
—Shakespeare.
1479
Four things come not back.
The spoken word,
The sped arrow,
The past life,
And the neglected opportunity.
1480
To-day is the opportunity for enjoyment and work; knowest thou where thou wilt be to-morrow? Time flies swiftly away, and we with it.
—Gleim.
1481
OPPRESSORS—EVERYWHERE.
There are sharks in the ocean, and wolves in the forest, and eagles in the air, and tyrants on thrones, and tormentors in cottages.
—Dr. J. Hamilton.
1482
All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.
—Shakespeare.
