SELECTED LARGELY FROM EASTERN SOURCES
BY
“Concise sentences, like darts, fly abroad and make impressions,while long discourses are tedious and not regarded.”—Bacon.
“Many are the sayings of the wise,
In ancient and in modern books enrolled.”—Milton.
LONDON
Published by HUTCHINSON & CO.
AT 34 PATERNOSTER ROW
1893
PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
AND
TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET
LONDON, W.C.
TO
FRANCIS THORNTON BARRETT,
CHIEF LIBRARIAN,
MITCHELL LIBRARY, GLASGOW,
This Little Book,
WITH FRIENDLY GREETINGS,
IS INSCRIBED.
Cynics may ask, how many have profited bythe innumerable proverbs and maxims ofprudence which have been current in the worldtime out of mind? They will say that their onlyuse is to repeat them after some unhappy wighthas “gone wrong.” When, for instance, a man hasplayed “ducks and drakes” with his money, thefact at once calls up the proverb which declaresthat “wilful waste leads to woful want”; but did notthe “waster” know this well-worn saying fromhis early years downwards? What good, then, didit do him? Again, how many have been benefitedby the saying of the ancient Greek poet, that“evil communications corrupt good manners”?—albeitthey had it frequently before them in theirschool “copy-books.” Are the maxims of moralityuseless, then, because they are so much disregarded?
When a man has reached middle-age he generallyfeels with tenfold force the truth of those “sayingsof the wise” which he learned in his early years, andhas cause to regret, as well as wonder, that he hadnot all along followed their wholesome teaching.For it is to the young, who are about to crossthe threshold of active life, that such terse convincingsentences are more especially addressed, and, spiteof the proverbial heedlessness of youth, there willbe found many who are not deaf to this kind ofinstruction, if their moral environment be favourable.But, even after the spring-time of youth is past,there are occasions when the mind is peculiarlysusceptible to the force of a pithy maxim, whichmay tend to the reforming of one’s way of life.There is commonly more practical wisdom in astriking aphorism than in a round dozen of “goody”books—that is to say, books which are not goodin the highest sense, because their themes areoverlaid with commonplace and wearisome reflections.
May we not find the “whole duty of man”condensed into a few brief sentences, which havebeen expresse