Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Thomas Sprat

Are we not to pity and supply the poor, though they have no relation to us? No relation? That cannot be. The gospel styles them all our brethren: nay, they have a nearer relation to us—our fellow-members; and both these from their relation to our Saviour himself, who calls them his brethren.

In all works of liberality something more is to be considered besides the occasion of the givers; and that is the occasion of the receivers.

Charity is made the constant companion and perfection of all virtues; and well it is for that virtue where it most enters and longest stays.

That spotless modesty of private and public life, that generous spirit which all other Christians ought to labour after, should look in us as if they were natural.

Whatever you dislike in another person take care to correct in yourself.

This doctrine of God’s good will towards men, this command of men’s proportionable good will to one another, is not this the very body and substance, this the very spirit and life, of our Saviour’s whole institution?

The true profession of Christianity inviolably engages all its followers to do good to all men.

Forever all goodness will be most charming; forever all wickedness will be most odious.

Does not the whole tenour of the divine law positively require humility and meekness to all men?

’Tis the property of all true knowledge, especially spiritual, to enlarge the soul by filling it; to enlarge it without swelling it; to make it more capable, and more earnest to know, the more it knows.

If I will obey the gospel, no distance of place, no strangeness of country, can make any man a stranger to me.

Envy, malice, covetousness, and revenge are abolished: a new race of virtues and graces, more divine, more moral, more humane, are planted in their stead.

Opportunity is in respect to time, in some sense, as time is in respect to eternity: it is the small moment, the exact point, the critical minute, on which every good work so much depends.

Groundless prejudices and weaknesses of conscience, instead of tenderness, mislead too many others, too many, otherwise good men.

True zeal is not any one single affection of the soul, but a strong mixture of many holy affections, filling the heart with all pious intentions; all, not only uncounterfeit, but most fervent.

Do not too many believe no zeal to be spiritual, but what is censorious or vindicative? whereas no zeal is spiritual that is not also charitable.

The only true zeal is that which is guided by a good light in the head, and that which consists of good and innocent affections in the heart.

Those things in ourselves are the only proper objects of our zeal, which, in others, are the unquestionable subjects of our praises.

It is certainly a great disparagement to virtue and learning itself that those very things which only make men useful in the world should incline them to leave it. This ought never to be allowed to good men, unless the bad had the same moderation, and were willing to follow them into the wilderness. But if the one shall contend to get out of employment, while the other strive to get into it, the affairs of mankind are likely to be in so ill a posture that even the good men themselves will hardly be able to enjoy their very retreats in security.