Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources. No Cross, no Crown. Tolle crucem, qui vis auferre coronam. ST. PAULINUS, Bishop of Nola The way to bliss lies not on beds of down, And he that had no cross deserves no crown.- -QUARLES: Esther. Corporations have no souls. A corporation aggregate of many is invisible, immortal, and vests only in intendment and consideration of the law. They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for they have no souls, neither can they appear in person, but by attorney.-Coke's Reports, vol. x. p. 32. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. EURIPIDES: Fragments. For those whom God to ruin has designed, He fits for fate and first destroys their mind. DRYDEN: Hind and Panther. Men are but children of a larger growth; Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, DRYDEN: All for Love, iv. 1. Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. True friendship's laws are by this rule expressed, More worship the rising than the setting sun. POMPEY TO SYLLA: Plutarch's Lives. Incidis in Scillam cupiens vitare Charybdim. PHILIPPE GAULTIER: Alexandreis. History is philosophy teaching by example. DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS. Consistency a Jewel. In the search for the source of familiar quotations, none appears to have so completely baffled patient seekers as the phrase "Consistency is a jewel." Several years ago a perplexed scholar offered a handsome reward for the discovery of its origin. Not till quite recently, however, has the claim been set up that the original was found in the "Ballad of Jolly Robyn Roughhead," which is preserved in "Murtagh's Collection of Ancient English and Scottish Ballads." stanza in which it occurs is the following: Tush, tush, my lassie, such thoughts resign, Comparisons are cruel; Fine pictures suit in frames as fine, Consistency's a jewel : For thee and me coarse clothes are best, Rude folks in homely raiment drest- Cleanliness next to Godliness. The The origin of the proverb, "Cleanliness is next to godliness," has been the subject of extended investigation. Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" attributes the phrase to Rev. John Wesley; but as this prominent Methodist clergyman uses this sentence in his sermons as a quotation from some other work, it has been suggested that further search is requisite. Rev. Dr. A. S. Bettelheimer, of Richmond, Va., asserts that he has discovered this maxim in an abstract of religious principles contained in an old commentary on the Book of Isaiah. Thus the practical doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness, vigorousness, guiltlessness, abstemiousness and cleanliness. And cleanliness is next to godliness, which is next to holiness. He's a brick. An Eastern prince visited the ruler of a neighboring country, and after viewing various objects worthy of attention, asked to see the fortifications. He was shown the troops with this remark—“These are my fortifications; every man is a brick.” When you are at Rome do as the Romans do. This proverb has been traced to a saying of St. Ambrose. St. Augustine mentions in one of his letters (Ep. lxxxvj ad Casulan.) that when his mother was living with him at Milan, she was much scandalized because Saturday was kept there as a festival; whilst at Rome, where she had resided a long time, it was kept as a fast. To ease her mind he consulted the bishop on this question, who told him he could give him no better advice in the case than to do as he himself did. "For when I go to Rome," said Ambrose, "I fast on the Saturday, as they do at Rome; when I am here, I do not fast." With this answer, he says that "he satisfied his mother, and ever after looked upon it as an oracle sent from heaven." A Nation of Shopkeepers. To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers.-ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations. On May 31, 1817, Napoleon is reported to have said to Barry O'Meara,— You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of shopkeepers. Had I meant by this that you were a nation of cowards, you would have had reason to be displeased. . . I meant that you were a nation of merchants, and that all your great riches arose from commerce. Moreover, no man of sense ought to be ashamed of being called a shopkeeper. Voice from St. Helena. .... He's only a pauper whom nobody owns, are from the Pauper's Drive, by Thomas Noel. Taking time by the forelock. Spenser says, Sonnet lxx.: : Go to my love, where she is careless laid, Unless she do him by the forelock take. What will Mrs. Grundy say? In Morton's clever comedy, Speed the Plough, the first scene of the first act opens with a view of a farm-house, where Farmer Ashfield is discovered at a table with his jug and pipe, holding the following colloquy with his wife, Dame Ashfield, who figures in a riding-dress, with a basket under her arm:Ashfield-Well, Dame, welcome whoam. What news does thee bring vrom market? Dame.-What news husband? What I always told you; that Farmer Grundy's wheat brought five shillings a quarter more than ours did. Ash,-All the better vor he. Dame.-Ah! the sun seems to shine on purpose for him. Ash.-Come, come, missus, as thee has not the grace to thank God for prosperous times, dan't thee grumble when they be unkindly a bit. Dame. And I assure you Dame Grundy's butter was quite the crack of the market. Ash.-Be quiet woolye? always ding, dinging Dame Grundy into my ears- What will Mrs. Grundy zay? What will Mrs. Grundy think? Canst thee be quiet, let ur alone, and behave thyself pratty. Though lost to sight, to memory dear. This oft-quoted line is traced by a modern wag, of an inventive turn, to Ruthven Jenkyns, who wrote the following verses, published in the Greenwich Magazine for Marines, in 1701 :--Sweetheart, good-bye! the fluttering sail Is spread to waft me far from thee; My ship shall bound upon the sea. Perchance, all desolate and forlorn These eyes shall miss thee many a year; But unforgotten every charm, Though lost to sight, to mem'ry dear. Sweetheart, good-bye! one last embrace! And still shall recollection trace In Fancy's mirror, ever near, Each smile, each tear-that form, that face- Too low they build who build beneath the stars. Builders who adopt this motto are indebted for it to Young, The Complaint, viii. 215. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, is credited with this phrase. So much the worse for the facts. M. Royer Collard disapproved of the opinions of the Fathers of Port Royal on the doctrine of grace: "Ils ont les textes pour eux, disait il, j'en suis faché pour les textes." So much the worse for the texts,-a very different and much more reasonable saying than the paradoxical expression commonly ascribed to Voltaire. Conspicuous by its absence. Earl Russell, in an address to the electors of the city of London, alluding to Lord Derby's Reform Bill, which had just been defeated, said: Among the defects of the Bill, which were numerous, one provision was conspicuous by its presence, and one by its absence. In the course of a speech subsequently delivered at a meeting of Liberal electors at the London Tavern, he justified his use of these words thus:: It has been thought that by a misnomer or a bull on my part I alluded to it as "a provision conspicuous by its absence," a turn of phraseology which is not an original expression of mine, but is taken from one of the greatest historians of antiquity. The historian referred to is Tacitus, who, (Annals, iii. 761) speaking of the images carried in procession at the funeral of Junia, says: Sed præfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso quod effigies eorum non videbantur. Russell's adaptation recalls the "brilliant flashes of silence" which Sydney Smith attributed to Macaulay. Since the Jesuits succeeded in causing the lives of Arnauld and Pascal to be excluded from L'Histoire des Hommes Illustres, by Perrault, the epigrammatic expression Briller par son absence has been popular among the French. |