Admiration is a forced tribute, and to extort it from mankind (envious and ignorant as they are) they must be taken unawares.--_James Northcote._

~Adversity.~--If adversity hath killed his thousands, prosperity hath killed his ten thousands; therefore adversity is to be preferred. The one deceives, the other instructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity and so much commend it in their precepts.--Burton.

Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from our impatience.--Bishop Horne.

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,--cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.--Walter Scott.

Two powerful destroyers: Time and Adversity.--A. de Musset.

Our dependence upon God ought to be so entire and absolute that we should never think it necessary, in any kind of distress, to have recourse to human consolation.--Thomas a Kempis.

Adversity, like winter weather, is of use to kill those vermin which the summer of prosperity is apt to produce and nourish.--Arrowsmith.

Adversity, how blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of Guilt!--Blair.

~Advice.~--People are sooner reclaimed by the side wind of a surprise than by downright admonition.--L'Estrange.

Agreeable advice is seldom useful advice.--Massillon.

~Affectation.~--All affectation proceeds from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses.--Sydney Smith.

Affectation is certain deformity.--Blair.

~Affection.~--None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch, but love and envy.--Bacon.

None are so desolate but something dear, dearer than self, possesses or possess'd.--Byron.

Those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her own love.--George Eliot.

God give us leisure for these rights of love.--Shakespeare.

~Afflictions.~--Before an affliction is digested, consolation 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 comforter to take aim at.--Sterne.

Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches are better for beating; grapes come not to the proof till they come to the press; spices smell best when bruised; young trees root the faster for shaking; gold looks brighter for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; the palm-tree proves the better for pressing; chamomile, the more you tread it, the more you spread it. Such is the condition of all God's children: they are then most triumphant when most tempted; most glorious when most afflicted.--Bogatzky.

That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation. For many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of a great calamity.--Jeremy Taylor.

Nothing so much increases one's reverence for others as a great sorrow to one's self. It teaches one the depths of human nature. In happiness we are shallow, and deem others so.--Charles Buxton.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.--Bovee.

Afflictions sent by Providence melt the constancy of the noble-minded but confirm the obduracy of the vile. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and in the strong manifestations of divine power Pharoah found his punishment, but David his pardon.--Colton.

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.

To love all mankind, from the greatest to the lowest (or meanest), a cheerful state of being is required; but in order to see into mankind, into life, and, still more, into ourselves, suffering is requisite.--Richter.

Count up man's calamities and who would seem happy? But in truth, calamity leaves fully half of your life untouched.--Charles Buxton.

~Age.~--Wrinkles are the tomb of love.--Sarros in.

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.--George Eliot.

Autumnal green.--Dryden.

Ye old men, brief is the space of life allotted to you; pass it as pleasantly as ye can, not grieving from morning till eve. Since time knows not how to preserve our hopes, but, attentive to its own concerns, flies away.--Euripides.

The Grecian ladies counted their age from their marriage, not their birth.--Homer.

The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in, so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater.--South.

Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they are strongest for things a long way off.--George Eliot.

Serene, and safe from passion's stormy rage, how calm they glide into the port of age!--Shenstone.

Providence gives us notice by sensible declensions, that we may disengage from the world by degrees.--Jeremy Collier.

Age oppresses by the same degrees that it instructs us, and permits not that our mortal members, which are frozen with our years, should retain the vigor of our youth.--Dryden.

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice, for age whitens only the hair.--J. Petit Senn.

Up to forty a woman has only forty springs in her heart. After that age she has only forty winters.--Arsene Houssaye.

I love everything that's old. Old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.--Goldsmith.

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.--J. Petit Senn.

There are two things which grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to their beauty.--Chateaubriand.

~Agitation.~--Agitation is the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws.--Sir R. Peel.

Agitation is the method that plants the school by the side of the ballot-box.--Wendell Phillips.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.--Wendell Phillips.

~Agriculture.~--Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures, since the productions of nature are the materials of art.--Gibbon.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation but the only riches she can call her own.--Johnson.

Let the farmer for evermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.--Thomas Jefferson.

~Allegory.~--Allegories and spiritual significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. Allegories are fine ornaments, but not of proof.--Luther.

The allegory of a sophist is always screwed; it crouches and bows like a snake, which is never straight, whether she go, creep, or lie still; only when she is dead, she is straight enough.--Luther.

~Ambition.~--It was not till after the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi that the idea entered my mind that I might become a decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose for the first time the spark of great ambition.--Napoleon.

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.--Burke.

If there is ever a time to be ambitious, it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is hard. Fight in darkness; fight when you are down; die hard, and you won't die at all.--Beecher.

By that sin angels fell.--Shakespeare.

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.--Hume.

An ardent thirst of honor; a soul unsatisfied with all it has done, and an unextinguished desire of doing more.--Dryden.

Ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration.--George MacDonald.

Think not ambition wise, because 'tis brave.--Sir W. Davenant.

Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise.--Massinger.

~America.~--Child of the earth's old age.--L. E. Langdon.

The name--American, must always exalt the pride of patriotism.--Washington.

In America we see a country of which it has been truly said that in no other are there so few men of great learning and so few men of great ignorance.--Buckle.

America is as yet in the youth and gristle of her strength.--Burke.