GODLINESS. GODLINESS-Promises of. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. St. Paul. GOOD-when to be Done. That which is good to be done, cannot be done too soon; and if it is neglected to be done early, it will frequently happen that it will not be done at all. Bishop Mant. GOOD-in Everything. The man Who, in right spirit, communes with the forms And seeks for good, and finds the good he seeks; Until abhorrence and contempt are things He is compassionate, and has no thought, Wordsworth. GOOD-from Evil. GOOD and EVIL-Operation of. Health, beauty, vigour, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust, as they do as benefits to the just. Plato. GOOD-BREEDING-Advantages of. We see a world of pains taken, and the best years of life spent, in collecting a set of GOOD-BREEDING. thoughts in a college for the conduct of life; and, after all, the man so qualified shall besitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want common sense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice, and learning, cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellences, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. Steele. GOOD-BREEDING-Caricatures of. Some young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of Heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their tones and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little. La Bruyère. Good-breeding and refinement, or rather the externals of these qualities, are generally considered as wholly precluding those vulgar manifestations of ill-temper, rudeness, impertinence, and similar feelings, which the unsophisticated display with such perfect frankness. But it does not thence follow, that the well-bred and refined have not their little spites, little envious feelings, little assumptions of consequence to gratify; indeed, they do gratify them very freely; all the difference lies in the manner; for there is a finish, a delicacy of touch in the polite impertinence of the well-bred, which the under-bred may envy, but must never hope to attain. The slight that can be conveyed in a glance, in a gracious smile, in a wave of the hand, is often the ne plus ultra of art. What insult is so keen, or so keenly felt, as the polite insult, which it is impossible to resent? Nathalie. GOOD-BREEDING-Manifestation of Good-breeding shows itself most where, to an ordinary eye, it appears the least. Addison. GOOD-BREEDING-Necessity of. Good-breeding is as necessary a quality in conversation, to accomplish all the rest, as grace in motion and dancing. Sir W. Temple. GOOD-NATURE. Good-sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candour, is the product of right reason, which, of necessity, will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there is nothing perfect in mankind; and by distinguishing that which comes nearest to excellency, though not absolutely free from faults, will certainly produce a candour in the judge. Dryden. the character of the Deity; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing. Bacon. GOODNESS-Immortality of. Thousands of men breathe, move, and live, pass off the stage of life, and are heard of no more-Why? they do not partake of good in the world, and none were blessed by them; none could point to them as the means of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spake, could be recalled; and so they perished; their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal! Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name, in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year: you will never be forgotten. No, your name, your GOOD-NATURE the Beauty of the deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you GOOD-NATURE-the Gift of Heaven. That inexhaustible good-nature, which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. Washington Irving. Mind. leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven. Chalmers. There is nothing, no, nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is forgotten: let us hold to that faith, or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it; and play its part, through them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to the host of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear; for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves. Dickens. GOODNESS-Joy resulting from. The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us, is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of Divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it; and it will not only soothe and tranquillize a troubled spirit, but inspire a constant flow of good-humour, content, and gaiety of heart. Bishop Porteus. GOODNESS-a Principle. He that is a good man is three-quarters of GOSPEL-Grace of the. The Gospel comes to the sinner at once, with nothing short of complete forgiveness as the starting-point of all his efforts to be holy, It does not say, "Go and sin no more, and I will not condemn thee;" it says at once, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." Horatias Bonar. GOSPEL-Glorious Hope of the. GRACE. GOSPEL-Radiancy of the. It warms the spirit as it soars, And sheds deep radiance round our graves. GOSPEL-Good Tidings of the. I bring you good tidings of great joy, which It seems to me a great truth, that human things cannot stand on selfishness, mechanical | utilities, economics, and law courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin. Carlyle. GOVERNMENT-by Fear. Power is detested, and miserable is the life of him who wishes rather to be feared than to be loved. Nepos. GOVERNMENT-Dropping the Prerogative of. The surest way of governing, both in a private family and a kingdom, is for a husband and a prince sometimes to drop their prerogative. Hughes. GOVERNMENT-Unfitness for. He who too much fears hatred, is unfit to reign. Seneca. GRACE-Attributes of. Grace, like beauty, is one of those spontaneous inherent qualities which, though felt and acknowledged by all, yet have never been is only to be found in that nice, that hairsatisfactorily explained. Like beauty, too, it breadth calculation, so precisely situated between the poco più o meno, equally avoiding the tameness of insipidity and the affectation of grimace. Grace can never properly be said to exist without beauty, for it is only in the elegant proportions of beautiful forms that can be found that harmonious variety of line and motion, which is the essence and charm of grace. Propriety is an indispensable accompaniment of grace. The best of the antique statues have ever been considered as models of grace; and nowhere is this harmony GOSPEL-Divine Power of the. more conspicuous than in them. The grace For I am not ashamed of the gospel of of the Apollo depends not alone on the due Christ; for it is the power of God unto salva-proportion and poise of each limb, or the tion to every one that believeth; to the Jew elegant sway and easy motion of the figure; it first, and also to the Greek. St. Paul. consists too in the noble dignity of the action. The Gospel's glorious hope. Its rule of purity, its eye of prayer, which harmonizes so beautifully with the character stamped on the face and figure, and which completes one of the most sublime and poetic works that art has ever produced. Winkelman. GRACE of Person. GRACE and ELEGANCE. abound which are able to propagate themselves GRATITUDE-Agreeableness of. nature GRATITUDE-Aids to. Grace is in a great measure a natural gift, elegance implies cultivation, or something of Warm into ecstasy. more artificial character. A rustic uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons: we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten, or a young fawn, are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd. Lastly, "elegant" may be applied to mental qualifications, which "graceful" never Elegance must always imply something that is made or invented by man. An imitation of nature is not so; therefore we do not speak of an elegant picture," though we do of an elegant pattern for a gown, an elegant piece of work. The general rule is, that elegance is the characteristic of art, and grace Whately. can of nature. 46 GRACEFULNESS-a Simile. GRASSES-Uses of. Grasses are Nature's care. Wordsworth. With these God clothes the earth; with these sustains its inhabitants. Cattle feed upon their leaves, birds upon their smaller seeds, men upon the larger; for few readers need be told that the plants which produce our bread-corn belong to this class. In those tribes which are more generally considered as grasses, their extraordinary means and powers of preservation and increase, their hardiness, their almost unconquerable disposition to spread, their properties of reproduction, coincide with the intention of Nature concerning them. They thrive under a treatment by which other plants are destroyed. The more their leaves are consumed, the more their roots increase; the more they are trampled upon, the thicker they grow. Many of the seemingly dry and dead leaves of grasses revive, and renew their verdure in the spring. Ia lofty mountains, where the summer heats are not sufficient to ripen the seeds, grasses Amongst the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one, to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of his works of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God. He hath so ordered things that almost every part of the creation is for our benefit, either to the support of our being, the delight of our senses, or the agreeable exercise of the rational faculty. If there are some few poisonous animals and plants fatal to man, these may serve to heighten the contrary blessings; since we could have no idea of benefits, were we inhas given us reason, by which we are able to sensible of their contraries; and seeing God choose the good, and avoid the evil, we suffer very little from the malignant parts of the creation. Edwards. GRATITUDE-of Generous Poverty. I have five hundred crowns, Thy fragrant bosom, earth, unfold, GRAVE-appears Distant. Gibbons. As a tract of country narrowed in the distance expands itself when we approach, thus the way to our near grave appears to us as long as it did formerly when we were far off. Richter. GRAVE-the Leveller of all Distinctions. What will they then avail him in the grave? GRAVE-The Lonely. It was a solitary mound, Which two spears'-length of level ground As, if in some respect of pride, Or melancholy's sickly mood, Still shy of human neighbourhood, The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; Or guilt, that humbly would express nor A penitential loneliness. Wordsworth |
