A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.-GOETHE. Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.-TENNYSON. It is an error to suppose that a man belongs to himself. No man does. He belongs to his wife, or his children, or his relations, or to his creditors, or to society in some form or other.-G. A. SALA. The record of life runs thus: Man creeps into childhood, -bounds into youth,-sobers into manhood,-softens into age, -totters into second childhood, and slumbers into the cradle prepared for him, thence to be watched and cared for.HENRY GILES. How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man! -YOUNG. He is the whole encyclopædia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn; and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.-EMERSON. Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.BURKE. Man is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this, —one dog does not change a bone with another. -ADAM SMITH. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. -POPE. His life was gentle; and the elements Man that is born of woman is of few and full of trouble.-JOB 14: I. Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.-CARLYLE. An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.— EMERSON. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! SHAKESPEARE. There are but three classes of men, the retrograde, the stationary, and the progressive. —Lav ATER. Before man made us citizens, great nature made us men.-LOWELL. Manners.-Evil communications corrupt good manners.-1 Cor. 15: 33. The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure.-EMERSON. Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. -SWIFT. I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.-CHESTERFIELD. A man's worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.-LA BRUYÈRE. There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts, fine breeding.—LYTTON. In the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as want of manners. —LAVATER. Good manners are a part of good morals. WHATELY. One principal part of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those below us. SWIFT. As a man's salutations, so is the total of his character; in nothing do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation.LAVATER. Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows. -EMERSON. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colors to our lives. According to their quality they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.—BURKE. Good breeding is the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them.-CHESTERFIELD. To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.—HANNAH MORE. A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.-CHESTER The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it. LYTTON. Marriage. Save the love we pay to heaven, there is none purer, holier, than that a virtuous woman feels for him she would cleave through life to. Sisters part from sisters, brothers from brothers, children from their parents, but such woman from the husband of her choice, never!— SHERIDAN KNOWLES. I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.-GOLDSMITH. A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.-JEREMY TAYLOR. A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action. -SOUTHEY. It is not good that the man should be alone.— GENESIS 2: 18. The most unhappy circumstance of all is, when each party is always laying up fuel for dissension, and gathering together a magazine of provocations to exasperate each other with when they are out of humor.-STEELE. When thou choosest a wife, think not only of thyself, but of those God may give thee of her, that they reproach thee not for their being.TUPPER. An obedient wife commands her husband. TENNYSON. No man can either live piously or die righteous without a wife. -RICHTER. Two persons who have chosen each other out of all the species with a design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment have, in that action, bound themselves to be good-humored, affable, discreet, forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties and perfections, to the end of their lives. -ADDISON. Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.—AARON HILL. A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that. -DR. JOHNSON. Go down the ladder when thou marriest a wife; go up when thou choosest a friend.-RABBI BEN AZAI. Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust for marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first by showing that she made him so happy as a married man that he wishes to be so a second time.-DR. JOHNSON. Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle pow'rs, -COTTON. |
