EXAMPLE. A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the inest rules and precepts of morality. 1397 Addison: The Spectator. No. 299. First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others. 1398 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. III. Pursuits. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. 1399 Burke: Letters on a Regicide Peace. Letter i. 1796. Johnson: Rasselas. Ch. 30. Children have more need of models than of critics. 1401 Joubert: Pensées. No. 261. (Attwell, Translator.) I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but as an example to deter. 1402 Junius: Letter. To the Duke of Grafton. Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave. 1403 Wendell Phillips: Orations, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters. The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement, Jan. 27, 1853. I shall tread in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor. 1404 Martin Van Buren: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1837. Complimenting Gen. Jackson. EXCESS. He does nothing who endeavors to do more than is allowed to humanity. 1405 Too much of a good thing. 1406 EXERCISE. Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act iv. Sc. 1. I take the true definition of exercise to be labor without weariness. 1407 EXILE. Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. IV. 151. Note 1. (George Birkbeck Hill, Editor, 1887.) Exile is terrible to those who have, as it were, a circumscribed habitation; but not to those who look upon the whole globe but as one city. 1408 Cicero: Paradoxes. II. (Edmonds, Translator.) EXPECTATION. He hath, indeed, better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how. 1409 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. EXPERIENCE — -see Custom, Education, Judgment, Religion, Science, Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us. 1410 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. II. Enterprise. God sends experience to paint men's portraits. 1411 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. The head learns new things, but the heart forevermore practises old experiences. Therefore our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning. 1412 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Experience only can teach men not to prefer what strikes them for the present moment, to what will have much greater weight with them hereafter. 1413 Lord Chesterfield: Miscellaneous Pieces, 63. To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed. 1414 Coleridge: Table Talk. Additional Table Talk. Experience. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. 1415 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. 1416 Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield. Ch. 18. Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it. 1417 Hawthorne: American Note-Books, Oct. 25, 1836. Experience makes us wise. 1418 Hazlitt: Table Talk. Second series. Pt. ii. Essay Xxxvi. On Novelty and Familiarity. A man who does not learn to live while he is getting a living, is a poorer man after his wealth is won, than he was before. 1419 J. G. Holland: Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects. V. High Life and Low Life. Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace. Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. 1421 John Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. ii. Ch. 1. One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. 1422 Lowell: Among My Books. Shakespeare Once More. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction, and set with the sharp mordant of experience. 1423 Lowell: My Study Windows. Abraham Lincoln. 1864. Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past. 1424 Wendell Phillips: Orations, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters. The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement, Jan. 27, 1853. Unless experience be a jewel; that I have purchased at an infinite rate. 1425 Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor. EYES -see Hatred. Eyes bright, with many tears behind them. 1426 Carlyle: Reminiscences. Jane Walsh Carlyle. (Froude, Editor.) The eyes, being in the highest part, have the office of sentinels. 1427 Cicero: Of the Nature of the Gods. Bk. ii. Sec. 56. (Yonge, Translator.) A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes. 1428 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Bk. iv. Ch. 14. Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! 1429 Emerson: Conduct of Life. Behavior. Those only are steady, lambent I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. beautiful which, like the planets, have a light, are luminous, but not sparkling. 1430 Longfellow: Hyperion. Bk. iii. Ch. 4. Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; and if the heart be a lurking-place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part. 1431 Frederick Saunders: Stray Leaves of Literature. Physiognomy. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight. I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond: thou hast the right arched bent of the brow. 1433 Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor. F. FACE-see Beards, Blushes, Contentment, Eyes, Gratitude, Hair, Laughter, Sympathy. Rationalia. He had a face like a benediction. Ornamenta Cervantes: Don Quixote. Bk. i. Pt. i. Ch. 6. (Jarvis, Translator.) The silent echo of the heart. 1436 Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith): The Tin There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer. 1437 Coleridge: Table Talk. Additional Table Talk. Human Countenance. What a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his acquaintances may be able to read it. The very intercourse with him may have rendered it more difficult. 1438 George MacDonald: Weighed and Wanting. Ch. 11. Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, cause laughter when they are together, by their resemblance. 1439 Pascal: Thoughts. Ch. ix. xxxix. (Wight, Translator. Louandre edition.) A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again. 1440 Joseph Roux: Meditations of a Parish Priest. Love, Friendship, Friends, No. 10. (Hapgood, Translator.) Faces are as legible as books, with this difference in their favor, that they may be perused in much less time than printed pages, and are less liable to be misunderstood. 1441 Frederick Saunders: Stray Leaves of Literature. Physiognomy. A noble soul spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an irresistible grace, and often even triumphs over the natural disfavor. 1442 Schiller: Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Grace and Dignity. Now Heaven bless that sweet face of thine! 1443 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. ii. Act ii. Sc. 4. Doubtless the human face is the grandest of all mysteries; yet fixed on canvas it can hardly tell of more than one sensation; no struggle, no successive contrasts accessible to dramatic art, can painting give, as neither time nor motion exists for her. 1444 Madame de Staël: Corinne. Bk. viii. Ch. 4. (Isabel Hill, Translator.) Sea of upturned faces. 1445 FACT. Daniel Webster: Speech, Faneuil Hall, Boston, Facts are stubborn things. 1446 Elliot Essays. Field Husbandry, 1747. Le Sage: Gil Blas. Bk. x. Ch. 1. (Smollett, Translator.) There have, undoubtedly, been bad great men; but inasmuch as they were bad, they were not great. 1447 Leigh Hunt: Table Talk. Bad Great Men. Complaints are vain; we will try to do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past. 1448 Johnson: Letters to and from the late Samuel To fail at all is to fail utterly. Lowell: Among My Books. Dryden. |