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had looked upon it with tenderness and extenuation, and excused it for the sake of his other virtues; or had considered him as too wise to need advice, or too delicate to be shocked with reproach; or, because we cannot feel without pain these reflections roused, which we have been endeavouring to lay asleep; and when pain has produced anger, who would not will ingly believe that it ought to be discharged on others, rather than himself?

DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 40. People are sooner reclaimed by the side-wind of a surprise than by downright admonition. L'ESTRANGE.

A man takes contradiction and advice much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in the violent down-pour of rain. RICHTER.

Let no man presume to give advice to others that has not first given good counsel to himself. SENECA.

If you would convince a person of his mistakes, accost him not upon that subject when his spirit is ruffled. DR. I. WATTS.

AFFECTATION.

Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavours to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances; whether it be, that every man hates falsehood, from the natural congruity of truth to his faculties of reason, or that every man is jealous of the honour of his understanding, and thinks his discernment consequentially called in question, whenever anything is exhibited under a borrowed form.

The wild havoc affectation makes in that part of the world which should be most polite, is visible wherever we turn our eyes; it pushes men not only into impertinences in conversation, but also in their premeditated speeches. At the bar it torments the bench, whose business it is to cut off all superfluities in what is spoken before it by the practitioner; as well as several little pieces of injustice which arise from the law itself. I have seen it make a man run from the purpose before a judge who was, when at that, with all the pomp of eloquence in his the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader, power, he never spoke a word too much.

SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 38.

AFFECTIONS.

It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections, but to regulate them.

ADDISON.

A resemblance of humour and opinion, a fancy for the same business or diversion, is a ground of affection. JEREMY COLLier.

The successes of intellectual effort are never so great as when aided by the affections that animate social converse.

JOHN FOSTER: Journal.

All things being double-handed, and having the appearances both of truth and falsehood, where our affections have engaged us we attend only to the former. GLANVILL: Scepsis.

We read of a "joy unspeakable and full of glory," of "a peace that passeth all understanding," ," with innumerable other expressions of a similar kind, which indicate strong and vehement emotions of mind. That the great oband hell, are of sufficient magnitude to justify jects of Christianity, called eternity, heaven, vivid emotions of joy, fear, and love, is indisputable, if it be allowed we have any relation to them; nor is it less certain that religion could never have any powerful influence if it did not influence through the medium of the affections. All objects which have any permanent influence influence the conduct in this way. We may possibly be first set in motion by their fects, and has always the laudable aim of supposed connection with our interest; but unless they draw to themselves particular affecpleasing, though it always misses it. tions the pursuit soon terminates.

DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 20. Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural. LOCKE.

Affectation endeavours to correct natural de

LOCKE.

When our consciousness turns upon the main design of life, and our thoughts are employed upon the chief purpose either in business or pleasure, we shall never betray an affectation, for we cannot be guilty of it; but when we give the passion for praise an unbridled liberty,

our pleasure in little perfections robs us of what is due to us for great virtues and worthy qualities. How many excellent speeches and honest actions are lost for want of being indifferent where we ought!

SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 38.

ROBERT HALL:

Fragment on the Right of Worship. Affections (as joy, grief, fear, and anger, with such like), being, as it were, the sundry fashions and forms of appetite, can neither rise at the conceit of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose

but rise at the sight of some things.

HOOKER: Eccles. Pol., Book I.

Be it never so true which we teach the world to believe, yet if once their affections begin to be alienated a small thing persuadeth them to change their opinions. HOOKER.

Affection is still a briber of the judgment; and it is hard for a man to admit a reason against the thing he loves, or to confess the force of an argument against an interest.

SOUTH.

The only thing which can endear religion to your practice will be to raise your affections above this world. WAKE.

AFFLICTION.

In afflictions men generally draw their consolations out of books of morality, which indeed are of great use to fortify and strengthen the mind against the impressions of sorrow. Monsieur St. Evremont, who does not approve of this method, recommends authors who are apt to stir up mirth in the minds of the readers, and fancies Don Quixote can give more relief to a heavy heart than Plutarch or Seneca, as it is much easier to divert grief than to conquer it. This doubtless may have its effects on some tempers. I should rather have recourse to authors of a quite contrary kind, that give us instances of calamities and misfortunes and show human nature in its greatest distresses.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 163.

Make the true use of those afflictions which

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How naturally does affliction make us Christians! and how impossible is it when all human help is vain, and the whole earth too poor and trifling to furnish us with one moment's peace, how impossible is it then to avoid looking at the gospel! COWPER

Letter to Lady Hesketh, July 4, 1765.

How every hostile feeling becomes mitigated into something like kindness, when its object, perhaps lately proud, assuming, unjust, is now seen oppressed into dejection by calamity! The most cruel wild beast, or more cruel man, if seen languishing in death and raising towards us a feeble and supplicating look, would certainly move our pity.

JOHN FOSTER: Journal.

There is a certain equanimity in those who are good and just which runs into their very sorrow and disappoints the force of it. Though they must pass through afflictions in common with all who are in human nature, yet their conscious integrity shall undermine their afflic

his hand, mercifully severe, hath been pleased tion; nay, that very affliction shall add force to to lay upon thee. their integrity, from a reflection of the use of virtue in the hour of affliction.

ATTERBURY.

Though it be not in our power to make affliction no affliction, yet it is in our power to take off the edge of it, by a steady view of those divine joys prepared for us in another state.

ATTERBURY.

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FRANCHAM: Spectator, No. 520.

A consideration of the benefit of afflictions should teach us to bear them patiently when they fall to our lot, and to be thankful to Heaven for having planted such barriers around us, to restrain the exuberance of our follies and our crimes.

Let these sacred fences be removed; exempt the ambitious from disappointment and the guilty from remorse; let luxury go unattended with disease, and indiscretion lead into no embarrassments or distresses; our vices would range without control, and the impetuosity of our passions have no bounds; every family would be filled with strife, every nation with carnage, and a deluge of calamities would break in upon us which would produce more misery in a year than is inflicted by the hand of Providence in a lapse of ages.

ROBERT HALL: Character of Cleander. The time of sickness or affliction is like the cool of the day to Adam, a season of peculiar propriety for the voice of God to be heard; and

may be improved into a very advantageous opportunity of begetting or increasing spiritual

life.

HAMMOND.

The minds of the afflicted do never think they have fully conceived the weight or measure of their own woe: they use their affection as a whetstone both to wit and memory. HOOKER.

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Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

As daily experience makes it evident that misfortunes are unavoidably incident to human life, that calamity will neither be repelled by fortitude, nor escaped by flight; neither awed by greatness, nor eluded by obscurity; philosophers have endeavoured to reconcile us to that condition which they cannot teach us to merit, by persuading us that most of our evils are made afflictive only by ignorance or perverseness, and that nature has annexed to every vicissitude of external circumstances some advantage sufficient to over-balance all its inconDR. S. JOHNSON. veniences.

It is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed on a better state. Prosperity, alloyed and imperfect as it is, has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honours forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are otherwise than by affliction awakened to a sense of our imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or to quiet, and how justly we may ascribe to the superintendence of a higher power those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of DR. S. JOHNSON. our policy or courage.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is, how much has DR. S. JOHNSON. been escaped.

Upon the upshot, afflictions are the methods of a merciful Providence to force us upon the only means of settling matters right.

L'ESTRANGE.

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. The sinner's conscience is the best expositor of the mind of God, under any judgment or SOUTH. affliction.

It is a very melancholy reflection, that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain, to be in their right senses. Prosperous people (for happy there are none) are hurried away with a fond sense of their present condition, and thoughtless of the mutability of fortune. Fortune is a term which we must use, in such discourses as these, for what is wrought by the unseen hand of the Disposer of all things. But methinks the disposition of a mind which is truly great is that which makes misfortunes and sorrows little when they befall ourselves, great and laThe mentable when they befall other men.

most unpardonable malefactor in the world going to his death and bearing it with composure would win the pity of those who should behold him; and this not because his calamity is deplorable, but because he seems himself not to deplore it. We suffer for him who is less sensible of his own misery, and are inclined to despise him who sinks under the weight of his SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 312.

distresses.

Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late; but there is a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comSTERNE. forter to take aim at.

When a storm of sad mischance beats upon our spirits, turn it into advantage, to serve reJEREMY TAYLOR. ligion or prudence.

Sad accidents, and a state of affliction, is a school of virtue: it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

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Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.

TILLOTSON.

God will make these evils the occasion of greater good, by turning them to advantage in this world, or increase of our happiness in the TILLOTSON.

next.

None of us fall into those circumstances of danger, want, or pain, that can have hopes of relief but from God alone; none in all the TILLOTSON. world to flee to but him.

All men naturally fly to God in extremity, and the most atheistical person in the world, TILLOTSON. when forsaken of all hopes of any other relief, is forced to acknowledge him.

It is our great unhappiness, when any calamities fall upon us, that we are uneasy and dissatisWAKE. fied.

Let us not mistake God's goodness, nor WAKE. imagine because he smites us, that we are forsaken of him.

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Age makes us most fondly hug and retain the good things of this life, when we have the least prospect of enjoying them. ATTERBURY.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be good for the present, because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both; and good for succession, that young men may be learners, while men in age are actors; and, lastly, good for external accidents, because authority followeth old men, and favour and popularity youth: but for the moral part, perhaps, youth will have the preeminence, as age hath for the politic.

LORD BACON :

Essay XLIII.: Of Youth and Age. Cicero was at dinner, when an ancient lady said she was but forty: one that sat by rounded him in the ear, She is far more, out of the question. Cicero answered, I must believe her, for I have heard her say so any time these ten years. LORD BACON.

Old men who have loved young company, and been conversant continually with them, have been of long life. LORD BACON.

The ancient sophists and rhetoricians, who had young auditors, lived till they were an hundred years old; and so likewise did many of the grammarians and schoolmasters, as Orbilius. LORD BACON.

We are so far from repining at God that he hath not extended the period of our lives to the longevity of the antediluvians, that we give him thanks for contracting the days of our trial, and receiving us more maturely into those everlasting habitations above. BENTLEY.

Throughout the whole vegetable, sensible, and rational world, whatever makes progress towards maturity, as soon as it has passed that point, BLAIR. begins to verge towards decay.

A joyless and dreary season will old age prove, if we arrive at it with an unimproved or corrupted mind. For this period, as for everything, certain preparation is necessary; and that preparation consists in the acquisition of knowledge, Then is the time when a friends, and virtue. man would especially wish to find himself surrounded by those who love and respect him,— who will bear with his infirmities, relieve him of his labours, and cheer him with their society. Let him, therefore, now in the summer of his

days, while yet active and flourishing, by acts of

seasonable kindness and benevolence insure that love, and by upright and honourable conduct lay the foundation for that respect which in old age he would wish to enjoy. In the last place, let him consider a good conscience, peace with God, and the hope of heaven, as the most effectual consolations he can possess when the evil days shall come. BLAIR: Lectures.

We are both in the decline of life, my dear dean, and have been some years going down the hill let us make the passage as smooth as we and the use of those means which experience can. Let us fence against physical evil by care, must have pointed out to us; let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. We may, nay (if we tion against her plainest dictates) we shall, of will follow nature and do not work up imaginacourse, grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interests of a system out of which we are soon to go. This is much better than stupidity. The decay of passion strengthens philosophy; for passion may decay and stupidity not succeed. Passions (says Pope, our divine, as you will see one time or other) are the gales of life; let us not complain that they do not blow a storm. What hurt does age do us in subduing what we toil to subdue all our lives? It is now six in the morning; I recall the time (and am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure or jaded with business; my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, serene, and calm; stand like objects at a distance from me, where that the past and even the present affairs of life I can keep off the disagreeable, so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Passions, in their force, would bring all these, nay, even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would ill defend me in the scuffle.

LORD BOLINGBROKE: Letter to Dean Swift.

The failure of the mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disease. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence; indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have

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The choleric fall short of the longevity of the sanguine. SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

Old men do most exceed in this point of folly, commending the days of their youth they scarce remembered, at least well understood not.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Vulgar Errors. We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavour to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behaviour to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes.

BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 301.

No man lives too long who lives to do with spirit and suffer with resignation what Providence pleases to command or inflict; but, indeed, they are sharp commodities which beset BURKE:

old age.

Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks

upon his Pension, 1796.

A man of great sagacity in business, and he preserved so great a vigour of mind even to his death, when near eighty, that some who had known him in his younger years did believe him to have much quicker parts in his age than before. EARL OF CLARENDON.

Providence gives us notice by sensible declensions, that we may disengage from the world by degrees. JEREMY COLLIER.

It would be well if old age diminished our perceptibilities to pain in the same proportion that it does our sensibilities to pleasure; and if life has been termed a feast, those favoured few are the most fortunate guests who are not compelled to sit at the table when they can no longer partake of the banquet. But the misfortune is, that body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together. It is bad when the mind survives the body; and worse still when the body survives the mind; but when both these survive our spirits, our hopes, and our health, this is worst of all.

COLTON: Lacon.

The continual agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of any constitution, especially in age: and many causes are required for refreshment betwixt the heats. DRYDEN.

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Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living. Those dangers which, in the vigour of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for a continued existence. Whence, then, is this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years? whence comes it that we thus make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a period when it be comes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil? Life would be insupportable to an old man who, loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigour of manhood: the numberless calamities of decaying nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure, would at once induce him with his own hand to terminate the scene of misery: but happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial, and life acquires an imaginary value in proportion as its real value is no more. GOLDSMITH:

Essays, No. XIV.; also in Citizen of the
World, Letter LXXIII.

What can be a more pitiable object than decrepitude sinking under the accumulated load of years and of penury? Arrived at that period when the most fortunate confess they have no pleasure, how forlorn is his situation who, destitute of the means of subsistence, has survived his last child or his last friend! Solitary and neglected, without comfort and without hope, depending for everything on a kindness he has no means of conciliating, he finds himself left alone in a world to which he has ceased to belong, and is only felt in society as a burden it is impatient to shake off.

ROBERT HALL: Reflections on War.

Wisdom and youth are seldom joined in one; and the ordinary course of the world is more according to Job's observation, who giveth men advice to seek wisdom among the ancients, and in the length of days understanding,

HOOKER.

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