The Good Book (71 page)

50. ‘But instead of listening to discourses only, let us day by day fix our eyes on the good, until we become filled with the love of it.

51. ‘And then we will have helped fulfil the promise that lay in the victory of the Greeks over the Persians:

52. ‘To be free in honour, and wise in freedom.'

Proverbs

Chapter 1: Action

  1. Action is the proper fruit of knowledge.

  2. Great actions speak great minds.

  3. Actions need no trumpet.

  4. For the sake of one good act, a hundred ill acts might be forgiven.

Chapter 2: Adversity

  1. Adversity is the first path to truth.

  2. There is no education like adversity.

  3. Though it makes no one rich, it makes many wise.

  4. It has few friends, but proves those it has.

  5. Adversity flatters no one, it tries virtue and tests courage.

  6. Gold is tested by fire, brave men by adversity.

Chapter 3: Advice

  1. Advice is what the wise do not need and fools do not take.

  2. Who will not be advised cannot be helped.

  3. Advice most needed is least heeded.

  4. If the advice be good, it matters not who gave it.

  5. None can act upon advice but those who need it.

  6. Advice after mischief is like medicine after death.

  7. Be adviser to all, security for none.

  8. Less advice, more hands.

  9. In advising a friend, seek to help, not please.

10. It is bad advice that cannot be altered.

11. When well, we easily advise the sick.

12. The advice of fools is worth nothing.

13. Do not hazard your wealth on a pauper’s advice.

14. Whispered advice is not worth a pea.

Chapter 4: Affliction

  1. Affliction is like the blacksmith’s hammer; it shapes as it smites.

  2. Everyone has enough courage to bear others’ afflictions.

Chapter 5: Age

  1. A head that is white is no maid’s delight.

  2. Age, like love, cannot be hid.

  3. Age will not be defied.

  4. Age should think, youth should do.

  5. All would live long, but none would be old.

  6. Old age makes us wiser and more foolish.

  7. The autumn of the beautiful is beautiful.

  8. We do not count our years until we have nothing left to count.

  9. Age makes many white but not better.

10. Few know how to be old well.

11. Age plants more wrinkles in the mind than the face.

12. Old is as one’s heart.

13. Age comes uncalled.

14. Old people see best in the distance.

15. Old age and the wear of time teach many things.

16. The old age of an eagle is better than the youth of a sparrow.

17. What else are the elderly but voice and shadow?

18. Old age is more to be feared than death.

Chapter 6: Ambition

  1. Ambition is the growth of every clime.

  2. Ambition obeys no law but its own.

  3. Ambition spends unwisely what avarice collected.

  4. They shoot higher who aim at the sun than those who aim at a tree.

  5. Low ambition and thirst of praise: marks of the worthless.

  6. One does not heed the rungs of the ladder by which one climbs.

  7. There is nothing humbler than ambition when it first starts to climb.

  8. There is no eel so small but it hopes to become a whale.

Chapter 7: Anger

  1. Anger rides a mad horse.

  2. Anger sharpens valour.

  3. Anger is a bad counsellor.

  4. Anger is never without a reason, but seldom has a good one.

  5. Anger makes dull people witty but keeps them poor.

  6. Anger punishes itself.

  7. Those who are angry seldom want woe.

  8. Beware the fury of a patient man.

  9. The dog bites the stone, not the thrower.

10. Anger blinds the eye to truth.

11. However weak the hand, anger gives it strength.

12. Hidden wrath causes harm.

13. The remedy for anger is delay.

14. Anger is a fool.

Chapter 8: Appetite

  1. One always has a good appetite at another’s feast.

  2. The full stomach turns even from the honey of Hybla.

  3. Seek appetite by toil.

  4. A stomach seldom empty despises common food.

  5. Where reason rules, appetite obeys.

  6. The poor lack meat for their stomach, the rich lack stomach for their meat.

Chapter 9: Argument

  1. A contentious person never lacks words.

  2. A noisy arguer is always right.

  3. It were endless to dispute everything disputable.

  4. People may be convinced, but never pleased, against their will.

  5. To treat your adversary with respect is to give him an advantage he is not entitled to.

  6. A quarrel is fought with noise or fists, an argument with logic.

Chapter 10: Art

  1. Art has an enemy called ignorance.

  2. Art is not a thing, but a way.

  3. Art may err, but nature never.

  4. Art is its own expression.

  5. Art strives for form, and hopes for beauty, or truth; or both.

  6. Great art is eternity arrested for an instant.

  7. All the arts are brothers.

  8. Each art is a light to the others.

  9. The perfection of art is to conceal art.

10. What takes effect by chance is not art.

Chapter 11: Artists

  1. A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.

  2. An artist is a dreamer who dreams reality.

  3. Every artist was first an amateur.

  4. The art of every artist is his autobiography.

  5. Nothing can come from the artist that is not in the human being.

  6. Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.

  7. Great artists are simplifiers.

Chapter 12: Aspiration

  1. Who stays in the valley shall never surmount the hill.

  2. What defines you is not what you do, but what you would do.

  3. One is complete only if one desires to be more.

Chapter 13: Avarice

  1. The covetous do nothing well until they die.

  2. Avarice and happiness do not share a home.

  3. Avarice is a spur to industry.

  4. It is not lack but abundance that breeds avarice.

  5. They who covet are always poor.

  6. Poverty lacks much, avarice lacks everything.

  7. Misers fear to use their gains.

  8. The miser is as bereft of what he has as of what he lacks.

Chapter 14: Beauty

  1. Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

  2. All heiresses are beautiful.

  3. Beauty and folly are old companions.

  4. Beauty and honesty seldom agree.

  5. Beauty carries its dower in its face.

  6. Beauty is its own excuse.

  7. Beauty is a natural superiority.

  8. Beauty provokes thieves sooner than gold.

  9. Where beauty is, there will be love.

10. Beauty is as good as ready money.

11. Beauty opens locked doors.

12. Most women would rather be beautiful than good.

13. Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

14. There is beauty enough where there is goodness enough.

15. Rare is the union of beauty and modesty.

16. Beauty is a short-lived reign.

17. Beauty is a fading flower.

18. When the candles are out all women are fair, with money in hand all men are handsome.

Chapter 15: Beginnnings

  1. At first everything is difficult.

  2. All glory comes from daring to begin.

  3. Better never begin than never end.

  4. Who begins many things ends few.

  5. The first step is as good as half over.

  6. What begins with tow will not end as silk.

  7. Things are always at their best at the beginning.

  8. All beginnings are small.

Chapter 16: Belief

  1. Believe not all you see or half you hear.

  1. He does not believe who does not live accordingly.

  2. Each person’s own belief is true.

  3. Who believes everything, misses; who believes nothing, misses.

  4. People believe what they wish were true.

  5. Quick believers need broad shoulders.

  6. A belief is not true because it is useful.

  7. Who quick believes late repents.

  8. Who knows much believes less.

Chapter 17: Benefit

  1. Benefits, like flowers, please when fresh.

  2. Benefits turn to poison in bad minds.

  3. The last benefit is the most remembered.

  4. When benefited, remember it; when benefiting, forget it.

  5. Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

  6. Who confers a benefit loves more than the one benefited.

  7. Benefits are acceptable only if they can be repaid.

  8. Benefits are traced on sand, injuries on brass.

  9. To accept a benefit is to sell one’s freedom.

10. To benefit the worthy is to benefit all.

Chapter 18: Birth

  1. No one can help being born.

  2. We are not completely born until we are dead.

  3. I wept when I was born, and every day shows why.

  4. No one is born with an axe in hand.

  5. No one is born a partisan of this or that cause; all such are made.

Chapter 19: Blindness

  1. The sky is not less blue because the blind cannot see it.

  2. A pebble and a diamond are alike to the blind.

  3. Better be blind than see ill.

  4. Better half blind than both eyes out.

  5. People are most blind in their own cause.

  6. The blind eat many a fly.

  7. Blind men should judge no colours.

  8. The eyes are blind when the mind is elsewhere.

  9. Among the blind close your eyes.

Chapter 20: Blushing

  1. Whoever blushes is not quite a brute.

  2. People blush less for their crimes than their weaknesses.

  3. Rather see a young man blush than turn pale.

  4. When the guilty blush it is a sign of mending.

  5. Rather bring blood to the cheek than let it out of the body.

Chapter 21: Boldness

  1. The bold never lack a weapon.

  2. Bold knaves thrive without a grain of sense, while the good starve for want of impudence.

  3. Boldness is an ill keeper of promises.

  4. Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.

  5. It is a bold mouse that breeds in the cat’s ear.

  6. Boldness is a bulwark.

  7. Boldness leads to the highest or the lowest.

Chapter 22: Books

  1. Something is learned every time a book is opened.

  2. A book may be as great a thing as a battle.

3. Books are ships that traverse the seas of time.

4. Books cannot always please, however good; minds are not always craving for food.