Learn to hold thy tongue. - Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks of silence. Fuller.

As we must render an account of every idle word, so we must of our idle silence. Ambrose.

Silence is the ecstatic bliss of souls, that by intelligence converse. Otway.

I spake no word; inferior joys live but by utterance; rapture is born dumb. -H. Neele.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, fullformed and majestic, into the delights of life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Carlyle.

The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess.-Bulwer.

A judicious silence is always better than truth spoken without charity.De Sales.

Silence is a figure of speech, unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe. Theodore Parker.

A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life. -Chesterfield.

If thou desire to be held wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue. Quarles.

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do. Alfieri.

A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say. --Shenstone.

He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigor and decision. Who hastens to the end is silent; loudness is impotence. Lavater.

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered. Diderot.

As men of sense and genius say much in few words, so on the other hand the

weak and foolish speak much and say little. - Rochefoucauld.

Talkers and futile persons are commonly vain and credulous withal, for he that talketh what he knoweth will also talk what he knoweth not; therefore set it down that a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.-Bacon.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. George Eliot.

If any man think it a small matter to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.-Plutarch.

Of a distinguished general it was said that "he could hold his tongue in ten languages."

It is only reason that teaches silence; the heart teaches us to speak.-Richter.

It is better either to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few. Pythagoras.

None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.-Franklin.

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right. Cato.

If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two. - Rabbi Ben Azai.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says "there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it." A well-bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.-Blair.

Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation.-Addison.

SIMPLICITY.-In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity. -Longfellow.

When a man is made wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances, and

often discredits his best actions.-Addison.

Simplicity, of all things, is the hardest to be copied.-Steele.

He is of a free and open nature that thinks all men honest who but seem to be so, and will as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are. --Shakespeare.

Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united. The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.-H. Martineau.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.-Emerson.

Whose nature is so far from doing harms that he suspects none. - Shake

speare.

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.-Hazlitt.

The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank man, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness one who loves life, and understands the use of it; obliging alike at all hours; above all, of a golden temper, and steadfast as an anchor. For such an one we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker.-Lessing.

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature. Simplicity is in the intention; purity in the affection: simplicity turns to God; purity unites with and enjoys him. Thomas à Kempis.

When thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it is a clear proof that it should be rejected.-Vauvanar

gues.

The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men. Hare.

A childlike mind, in its simplicity, practices that science of good to which the wise may be blind.-Schiller.

If our love were but more simple, we should take Him at his word, and our lives would be all sunshine in the sweetness of the Lord.-Faber.

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straightforwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferiors, speak no

coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are. Alford.

Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness. Barrow.

Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.-P. J. Bailey.

There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.Pope.

SIN. Sin is, essentially, a departure from God.-Luther.

Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God.Shorter Catechism.

He that falls into sin is a man, that grieves at it is a saint, that boasteth of it is a devil; yet some glory in that shame, counting the stains of sin the best complexion of their souls. Fuller.

The recognition of sin is the beginning of salvation. Luther.

Sin is first pleasing, then it grows easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he is resolved never to repent, and then he is ruined. Leighton.

All the sin that has darkened human life and saddened human history began in believing a falsehood: all the power of Christianity to make men holy is associated with believing truth.-J. А. Broadus.

If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil; only his consent makes it his. - It is no sin to be tempted; it is to yield and be overcome.-Penn.

He who sins against men may fear discovery, but he who sins against God,

is sure of it.-Jones.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act. Shakespeare.

The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.-E. H. Chapin.

Our sins, like our shadows when day is in its glory, scarce appear; toward evening, how great and monstrous they are! Suckling.

Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the further on we go, the more we have to come back. -Barrow.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you. You love not death; love not the cause of death. - Baxter.

Respectable sin is, in principle, the mother of all basest crime. Follow it

to the bitter end, and there is ignominy

as well as guilt eternal.-Horace Bushnell.

If you would be free from sin, fly temptation: he that does not endeavor to avoid the one cannot expect Providence to protect him from the other. If the first sparks of ill were quenched, there would be no flame, for how can he kill, that dares not be angry; or be an adulterer in act, who does not transgress in thought; or be perjured, that fears an oath; or defraud, that does not allow himself to covet?-Palmer.

The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin. Carlyle.

Most sins begin at the eyes; by them commonly, Satan creeps into the heart: that man can never be in safety that hath not covenanted with his eyes.

The wages that sin bargains for with the sinner, are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him, are death, torment, and destruction. To understand the falsehood and deceit of sin, we must compare its promises and payments together.-South.

When we think of death, a thousand sins, which we have trodden as worms beneath our feet, rise up against us as flaming serpents.-Walter Scott.

I fear nothing but doing wrong.

Sterne.

As sins proceed they ever multiply; and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that went before it. Sir T. Browne.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission,

and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.-Walter Scott.

It is as supreme a folly to talk of a little sin as it would be to talk of a small decalogue that forbids it, or a diminutive God that hates it, or a shallow hell that will punish it.-C. S. Robinson.

No man becomes fully evil at once; but suggestion bringeth on indulgence; indulgence, delight; delight, consent; consent, endeavor; endeavor, practice; practice, custom; custom, excuse; excuse, defence; defence, obstinacy; obstinacy, boasting; boasting, a seared conscience and a reprobate mind.

Sin may open bright as the morning, but it will end dark as night.-Talmage.

Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue. Juvenal.

What is human sin but the abuse of human appetites, of human passions, of human faculties, in themselves all innocent?-R. D. Hitchcock.

The course of evil begins so slowly. and from such slight source, an infant's hand might stem the breach with clay; but let the stream get deeper, and philosophy, aye, and religion too, shall strive in vain, to turn the headlong current.

There are some sins which are more justly to be denominated surprises than infidelities. To such the world should be lenient, as, doubtless, Heaven is forgiving.-Massillon.

There is no sin we can be tempted to commit, but we shall find a greater satisfaction in resisting than in committing.

We are saved from nothing if we are not saved from sin. Little sins are pioneers of hell.-Howell.

There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not reign; and glorification, that it may not be.Cecil.

He that hath slight thought of sin never had great thoughts of God.Owen.

There is a vast difference between sins of infirmity and those of presumption, Every gross act of sin is much the same thing to the conscience that a great blow is to the head; it stuns and bereaves it of all use of its senses for a time. South.

Whatever disunites man from God disunites man from man.-Burke.

It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable. Molière.

No sin is small. It is against an infinite God, and may have consequences immeasurable.-No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.Jeremy Taylor.

Every sin is a mistake, as well as a wrong; and the epitaph for the sinner is, "Thou fool! "-A. Maclaren.

If I were sure God would pardon me, and men would not know my sin, yet I should be ashamed to sin, because of its essential baseness. -Plato.

The sin that now rises to your memory as your bosom sin, let this be first of all withstood and mastered. - Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, by prayer. Channing.

How immense appear to us the sins that we have not committed. - Mad.

Necker.

Sin is to be overcome, not so much by direct opposition to it as by cultivating opposite principles. Would you kill the weeds in your garden, plant it with good seed; if the ground be well occupied there will be less need of the hoe. -A. Fuller.

There is more bitterness in sin's ending than there ever was sweetness in its acting. If you see nothing but good in its commission, you will suffer only woe in its conclusion.-Dyer.

and God.-George Eliot.

Man-like it is, to fall into sin; fiendlike it is, to dwell therein; Christ-like it is, for sin to grieve; God-like it is, all sin to leave. Longfellow.

There is no fool equal to the sinner, who every moment ventures his soul.Tillotson.

Sins of the mind have less infamy than those of the body, but not less malignity. Whichcote.

It is not true that there are no enjoyments in the ways of sin; there are, many and various. But the great and radical defect of them all is, that they are transitory and unsubstantial, at war with reason and conscience, and always leave a sting behind. We are hungry, and they offer us bread; but it is poisoned bread. We are thirsty, and they offer us drink; but it is from deadly fountains. They may and often do satisfy us for the moment; but it is death in the end. It is only the bread of heaven and the water of life that can so satisfy that we shall hunger no more and thirst no more forever.Tryon Edwards.

SINCERITY. - Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be. Tillotson.

Sincerity is the face of the soul, as dissimulation is the mask.-S. Dubay.

Sincerity, a deep, genuine, heart-felt sincerity is a trait of true and noble manhood.

Inward sincerity will of course influence the outward deportment; where the one is wanting, there is great reason to suspect the absence of the other.Sterne.

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by con

Sincerity is no test of truth-no evidence of correctness of conduct.You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life? Tryon Edwards.

Sincerity, thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave thy onward path, although of hell destruction rise, to take dissimulation's winding way.-Home.

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them. Socrates.

Sincerity is like traveling on a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves. Tillotson.

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, selfmutilated, self-paralyzed. Coleridge.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; his love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; his tears, pure messengers sent from his heart; his heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth.Shakespeare.

Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue. Confucius.

It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. But let a man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with; that January is as favorable for seed-sowing as April; and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and is it so?-H. W. Beecher.

You know I say just what I think, and nothing more nor less. I cannot say one thing and mean another.-Longfellow.

SINGULARITY. - Let those who would affect singularity with success, first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular. -Colton.

He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.Feltham.

Singularity is laudable, when in contradiction to a multitude, it adheres to the dictates of morality and honor. In concerns of this kind it is to be looked upon as heroic bravery, in which a man leaves the species only as he soars above it.-Addison.

SLANDER.- (See "SCANDAL," "REPUTATION.")

Slander is a vice that strikes a double blow, wounding both him that commits, and him against whom it is committed. -Saurin.

Believe nothing against another, but on good authority; nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.-Penn.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as it is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at. -Swift.

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation his defence. Johnson.

When will talkers refrain from evilspeaking? When listeners refrain from evil-hearing.-Hare.

Di Diogenes being asked, "What is that beast, the bite of which is the most dangerous?" replied, "Of wild beasts, the bite of a slanderer; and of tame beasts, that of the flatterer."

Plato, hearing that some asserted he was a very bad man, said, "I shall take care so to live that nobody will believe them." Guardian.

Slander as often comes from vanity as from malice.

Slanderers are like flies, that pass all over a man's good parts to light only on his sores. - Rule of Life.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it. but live in innocence and let the world talk.-Molière.

Who stabs my name would stab my person, too, did not the hangman's axe lie in the way.-Crown.

The slanderer inflicts wrong by calumniating the absent; and he who gives credit to the calumny before he knows its truth, is equally guilty. Herodotus.

No might nor greatness can censure escape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes; what king 80 strong, can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? - Shakespeare.

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse than the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation and peace. Tryon Edwards.

Slander, whose edge is sharper than