ing 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