The Good Book (74 page)

  6. Who feasts every day never makes a good meal.

  7. The laziest are never lazy at board.

  8. It is good to be merry at meat.

  9. The sincerest love is the love of food.

10. To lengthen life, lessen meals.

11. Stop short of your appetite.

12. Unquiet meals make unquiet digestions.

13. We never repent at eating too little.

14. Who would eat the kernel must break the shell.

15. Who eats too much does not know how to eat.

16. The rich eat when they will, the poor when they can.

Chapter 59: Education

  1. People may be educated beyond their intelligence.

  2. Better build schoolrooms for the child than prisons for the adult.

  3. Genius without education is like silver in the moon.

  4. There is nothing so worthwhile as an instructed mind.

  5. The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.

  6. What sculpture is to marble, education is to the mind.

  7. Nature is stronger than education.

  8. Too much education can hinder as greatly as too little.

  9. Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

10. The foundation of society is the education of youth.

11. Only the educated are free.

12. Education leads to treasure.

13. Only the ignorant despise education.

Chapter 60: Enemies

  1. No one is without enemies.

  2. An enemy’s mouth seldom speaks well.

  3. Even from a foe one may learn wisdom.

  4. The wise dread their enemies.

  5. One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

  6. There is no little enemy.

  7. Though your enemy be a mouse, watch him like a lion.

  8. Your enemies make you wise.

  9. Enmity is anger waiting for revenge.

10. No tears are shed when an enemy dies.

11. Better a good enemy than a bad friend.

Chapter 61: Envy

  1. Envy and wrath shorten life.

  2. Envy does not enter an empty house.

  3. No one is made richer by envy.

  4. Bad eyes never see good.

  5. People have most what they envy most.

  6. Nothing sharpens sight like envy.

  7. The envious shall never lack woes.

  8. It is better to be envied than pitied.

  9. Envy takes no holidays.

10. I would rather my enemies envy me than I them.

11. The envious grow thin at others’ prosperity.

Chapter 62: Error

  1. The errors of the learned are learned errors.

  2. Error can be sincerely enough believed to count as truth.

  3. Error can only be defended by error.

  4. Error is a hardy plant that flourishes in any soil.

  5. Error, like straws, floats on the surface; the pearls lie deep below.

  6. Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

  7. No one prospers so suddenly as by other people’s errors.

  8. One error breeds twenty more.

  9. Love truth, but pardon error.

10. The wisest may err.

Chapter 63: Evil

  1. Bad people leave their mark wherever they go.

  2. Putrid flesh is all of a flavour.

  3. A bad tree does not yield good apples.

  4. A bad reaper never has a good sickle.

  5. Bad is the wool that cannot be dyed.

  6. Evil conduct is the root of misery.

  7. Better good afar than evil at hand.

  8. Evil is quickly learned.

  9. Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart.

10. Evil deserves the evil it gets.

11. Humanity creates the evil it endures.

12. None but the base delight in baseness.

13. Of one ill come many.

14. Evil often triumphs but never conquers.

15. Doing evil to avoid evil is still evil.

16. The worse the evil, the calmer we face it.

17. No time is too brief for the wicked to work evil in.

18. The authors of great evils know best how to remove them.

19. An evil life is a kind of death.

Chapter 64: Experience

  1. They know the water best who have waded through it.

  2. An ounce of wit bought is better than a pound of wit taught.

  3. Experience is good if not bought too dear.

  4. Experience is the mother of knowledge, the father of wisdom.

  5. Experience keeps an expensive school, but fools will learn in no other.

  6. They are wrong to blame the sea who have twice survived shipwreck.

  7. They are wise who learn from others’ woes.

  8. They come home wisest who come home whipped by their own follies.

  9. Put an old cat to an old rat.

10. Sad experience leaves no room for doubt.

11. The wise learn from others’ harm, the fool from his own.

12. I know by my own pot how others boil.

13. One bitten by a serpent is afraid of ropes.

14. A frog in a well knows nothing of the sea.

15. Who suffers, remembers.

Chapter 65: Failure

  1. Failure teaches success.

  2. Have the heart to fight and lose.

  3. Failure is not in the lexicon of youth.

  4. To fail in an immense ambition is to know the fiercest despair.

  5. They who do not fly high will fall less far.

  6. Not every fall is a failure.

  7. Hasty climbers have sudden falls.

  8. They fail badly who cannot rise again.

  9. It is easier to fail than to succeed; easiest not to try at all.

10. When a tree is falling, all cry ‘Down with it!’

11. To dare is to brave the thought of failure.

12. Not everything that shakes falls.

Chapter 66: Fame

  1. All fame is dangerous; good brings envy, bad brings shame.

  2. Fame is a magnifying glass.

  3. Fame is but the breath of the people.

  4. Fame is proof that people are gullible.

  5. Fondness of fame is avarice of air.

  6. Fame is fickle and partial.

  7. Fames comes unlooked for, if it comes at all.

  8. Fame is as ephemeral as the famous.

Chapter 67: Fathers

  1. It is not a father’s anger but his silence that a son dreads.

  2. The father, in praising the son, praises himself.

  3. He that loves the tree loves the branch.

  4. No man is responsible for his father.

  5. One father might support ten children, but ten children rarely support one father.

  6. One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

  7. A father loves his children in hating their faults.

  8. He that has his father for judge goes safely to trial.

Chapter 68: Fault

  1. A fault denied is twice committed.

  2. Everyone blames their faults on the times.

  3. He is faultless to a fault.

  4. Faults are thick where love is thin.

  5. Faults done by night blush by day.

  6. They are lifeless who are faultless.

  7. In every fault there is folly.

  8. People hate faults they do not themselves commit.

  9. The greatest fault is to be conscious of none.

10. Those who seek only faults, find nothing else.

11. The hunchback sees only his neighbour’s hump.

12. We never confess our faults except through vanity.

13. The fault of another is a good teacher to an apt pupil.

14. Who desires a faultless mule must walk.

15. Let a fault be concealed by its nearness to a virtue.

Chapter 69: Fear

  1. Fear is the mother of safety and the father of courage.

  2. They who fear you present, will hate you absent.

  3. Fear is the parent of cruelty.

  4. Fear is stronger than love.

  5. Fear springs from ignorance.

  6. Fear kills more than disease.

  7. Foolish fear doubles danger.

  8. Share your courage, keep your fear to yourself.

  9. Nothing is as rash as fear.

10. Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

11. The fearless man is his own salvation.

12. To fear the worst can cure the worse.

13. Fear tames lions.

14. If many fear you, fear the many.

15. Fear does not guard duty.

16. Fear makes people believe the worst.

17. Fear, not mercy, restrains the wicked.

18. Fear feels no pity when extreme danger threatens.

19. It is torment to fear what cannot be overcome.

20. Terror closes the ears and eyes.

Chapter 70: Flattery

  1. A flatterer is one who either despises you or wishes to cheat you.

  2. Flattery corrupts both the giver and the receiver.

  3. Flatterers look as much like friends as wolves look like dogs.

  4. Flattery is perfume, to be smelt not swallowed.

  5. Flattery sits in the parlour while plain speech is kicked out of doors.

  6. They put honey in their mouths who have none in their pot.

  7. Who loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer.

  8. Friend and flatterer do not meet in the same person.

  9. More flies are caught with a drop of honey than a lake of vinegar.

10. It is easier to flatter than praise.

11. A flatterer is a secret enemy.

12. Who paints me before, blackens me behind.

13. Who delight in being flattered, later pay by regret.

14. Flattery is so much bird lime.

15. Let anyone daub you with honey and you will never lack flies.

16. Better flatter fools than fight them.

Chapter 71: Folly

  1. Folly has the wings of an eagle and the eyes of an owl.

  2. Folly grows without watering.

  3. Folly makes itself sick.

  4. Happy those who learn from their youthful follies.

  5. If folly were grief, every house would weep.

  6. If others had not been foolish, we would be.

  7. It is folly to drown on dry land.

  8. It is folly to try to buy reputation.

  9. It is folly to sing twice to the deaf.

10. One person’s folly is another’s fortune.

11. Who live without folly are not as wise as they think.

12. Folly is self-inflicted misfortune.

13. It is better to advise folly than punish it.

14. Wealth excuses folly.

15. The shame lies not in one’s folly, but in not learning from it.

Chapter 72: Fools

  1. The fool’s mind dances on the tip of his tongue.

  2. Fools are like other people as long as they are silent.

  3. A fool may ask more questions in an hour than the wise can answer in seven years.

  4. Fools are sometimes right.

  5. A fool does not see the same tree as the wise.

  6. A fool’s tongue is long enough to cut his own throat.

  7. A rich fool is a wise person’s treasurer.

  8. Everyone is a fool sometimes, and none is a fool always.

  9. Everyone has a fool in his sleeve.

10. A fool is one who deals with fools.

11. Fools bite each other, where the wise agree.

12. Fools cut their fingers, the wise their tongues.