Man is an animal that cannot long be left in safety without occupation; the growth of his fallow nature is apt to run into weeds.-Hillard.

Wouldst thou know the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to Divine blessing: if it be lawful, thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful, thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.-Quarles.

Action hangs, as it were, "dissolved" in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.-Carlyle.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and deeds alone suffice.- Whittier.

To do an evil action is base; to do a good action, without incurring danger, is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.—Plutarch.

A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the Divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.-Cecil.

All our actions take their lines from the complexion of the heart; as landscapes their variety from light.-W. T. Bacon.

Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination, proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,-no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth.

is

Fichte.

The only true method of action in this world to be in it, but not of it.—Madame Swetchine.

Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.-Whipple.

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

Colton.

Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must be always doing or suffering.-Zimmermann.

Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls. When wrought in earliest youth, they lie in the memory of age like the coral islands, green and sunny, amidst the melancholy waste of ocean.— Rev. Dr. Thomas.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. Shakespeare.

Action is the highest perfection and draw ing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.-South.

Act! the wise are known by their actions; fame and immortality are ever their attendants. Mark with deeds the vanishing traces of swiftrolling time. Let us make happy the circle around us,-be useful as much as we may. For that fills up with soft rapture, that dissolves the dark clouds of the day!-Salis.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.
Shakespeare.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.-Hazlitt.

No man should be so much taken up in the search of truth, as thereby to neglect the more necessary duties of active life; for after all is

It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where Truth is not at the bottom, Nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other.— Tillotson.

Strong reasons make strong actions.

Shakespeare. The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.-Bible.

Man is born for action; he ought to do something. Work, at each step, awakens a sleeping force and roots out error. Who does nothing, knows nothing. Rise! to work! If thy knowledge is real, employ it; wrestle with nature; test the strength of thy theories; see if they will support the trial; act!—Aloysius.

Our actions are our own; their consequences belong to Heaven.-P. Francis.

"There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight," says Goethe. "I would open every one of Argus's hundred eyes before I used one of Briareus's hundred hands," says Lord Bacon. “Look_before_you leap," says John Smith, all over the world.- Whipple.

Our acts make or mar us, -we are the children of our own deeds.-Victor Hugo.

Remember that in all miseries lamenting becomes fools, and action, wise folk.

Sir P. Sidney.

A stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant.-Shakespeare.

Celerity is never more admired than by the negligent.-Shakespeare.

It is good policy to strike while the iron is hot; it is still better to adopt Cromwell's procedure, and make the iron hot by striking. The master-spirit who can rule the storm is great, but he is much greater who can both raise and rule it.-E. L. Magoon.

How slow the time to the warm soul, that, in the very instant it forms, would execute a great design!—Thomson.

Let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quickest decrees, the inaudible and noiseless foot of time steals, ere we can effect them.-Shakespeare.

Carlyle.

Toil, feel, think, hope. A man is sure to dream enough before he dies without making arrangements for the purpose.-Sterling.

There is no word or action but may be taken with two hands, either with the right hand of charitable construction, or the sinister interpretation of malice and suspicion; and all things do succeed as they are taken. To construe an evil action well is but a pleasing and profitable deceit to myself; but to misconstrue a good thing is a treble wrong, myself, the action, and the author.-Bishop Hall.

-to

What a man knows should find its expression in what he does. The value of superior knowledge is chiefly in that it leads to a performing manhood.-Bovee.

Actions rare and sudden do commonly proceed from fierce necessity, or else from some oblique design, which is ashamed to show itself in the public road.-Sir W. Davenant.

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.-Lavater.

Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christlike, he passes out of the region of theorizing, of system-building, and hireling service, into the region of beneficent activities. It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.-Horace Mann.

Life is an outward occupation, an actual work, in all ranks, and all situations.— Wilhelm von Humboldt. ACTORS.

Notwithstanding all that Rousseau has advanced so very ingeniously upon plays and players, their profession is, like that of a painter, one of the imitative arts, whose means are pleasure, and whose end is virtue.—Shenstone.

Comedians are not actors; they are only imitators of actors.-Zimmermann.

They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness. The height of their ambition is to be beside them. selves. To-day kings, to-morrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing. Made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call, they wear the livery of other men's fortunes; their very thoughts are not their own.—Hazlitt.

There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate, and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking.—

Goldsmith.

It is with some violence to the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage.—Lamb.

Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.-Sheridan.

The actor is in the capacity of a steward to every living muse, and of an executor to every departed one: the poet digs up the ore; he sifts it from the dross, refines and purifies it for the mint; the actor sets the stamp upon it, and makes it current in the world.-Cumberland.

They are the abstract, and brief chronicles of the time.-Shakespeare.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.-Shakespeare.

The stage is a supplement to the pulpit, where virtue, according to Plato's sublime idea, moves our love and affection when made visible to the eye.-Disraeli.

God is the author, men are only the players. These grand pieces which are played upon earth have been composed in heaven.-Balzac.

Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.-Shakespeare.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.-Cervantes.

We that live to please must please to live.Johnson.

In acting, barely to perform the part is not commendable; but to be the least out is contemptible.-Steele.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; it was only when he was off that he was acting.-Goldsmith.

ADAPTATION.

To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain birds, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.-Emerson.

ADDRESS.

Brahmâ once asked of Force, "Who is stronger than thou?" She replied, " Address." Victor Hugo.

A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.-Colton.

Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess.-Emerson.

There is a certain artificial polish, a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the beau monde, which, in the commerce of the world, supplies the place of natural suavity and good-humor, but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character.-Washington Irving.

Admiration and moderate contemplation have a great power to prolong life; for these detain the spirits upon pleasing subjects, without suffering them to tumultuate and act disorderly. But subtle, acute, and severe inquiries cut short life; for they fatigue and wear out the spirits.-Byron.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.— Rochefoucauld.

There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into compliance.-Burke.

Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.-Shenstone.

To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them.—

Ruskin.

There is a long and wearisome step between admiration and imitation.-Richter.

The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.-Bishop Whately.

Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains.-Johnson.