m those we love is self from self! A deadly
banishment.--_Shakespeare._

Short retirement urges sweet return.--_Milton._

Whatever is genuine in social relations endures despite of time, error,
absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better
die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no
virtue, but a fact.--_Tuckerman._

Frozen by distance.--_Wordsworth._

Short absence quickens love, long absence kills it.--_Mirabeau._

We often wish most for our friends when they are absent. Even in married
life love is not diminished by distance. A man, like a burning-glass,
should be placed at a certain distance from the object he wishes to
dissolve, in order that the proper focus may be obtained.--_Richter._

~Abstinence.~--Refrain to-night, and that shall lend a hand of easiness to
the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the
stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw him out with
wondrous potency.--_Shakespeare._

~Abuse.~--Abuse is not so dangerous when there is no vehicle of wit or
delicacy, no subtle conveyance. The difference between coarse and
refined abuse is as the difference between being bruised by a club and
wounded by a poisoned arrow.--_Johnson._

~Accident.~--What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously
together, the wind of accident collects in one brief
moment.--_Schiller._

What men call accident is God's own part.--_P. J. Bailey._

~Acquirements.~--Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks: he
who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the
other.--_Metastasio._

~Action.~--Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment
noise, but it never can enforce argument. If you speak to a dog, you use
action; you hold up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and in
proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will have the less
influence upon them.--_Johnson._

Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not act.--_Sophocles._

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of an orator, what
the second, and what the third? he answered, "Action." The same may I
say. If any should ask me what is the first, the second, the third part
of a Christian, I must answer, "Action."--_T. Brooks._

Our best conjectures, as to the true spring of actions, are very
uncertain; the actions themselves are all we must pretend to know from
history. That Caesar was murdered by twenty-four conspirato