when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered.

Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sound sense implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne.

Now, if we understand what unlucky persons are, we shall see that they are to be shunned, or that we are to consort with them only out of kindness or from sympathy, but without joining our interests with theirs; for they are persons who are not harmonious with the condition of things around them, and are as much at issue with life as a bird who should try to live in the water, or a fish to float in the air.

An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this will drive us to prudence and thoughtfulness.

Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little that occurs around him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, "deep calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machinery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the sea is to show the stars.

It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition or disposition is open to flattery; for poison would not be spread if the rats ate it not.

As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall.