PROCRASTINATION

flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.-Longfellow.

Always vote for a principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost.-John Quincy Adams.

Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.-Richter.

Principles last forever; but special rules pass away with the things and conditions to which they refer.-Seeley.

I have all reverence for principles which grow out of sentiments; but as to sentiments which grow out of principles, you shall scarcely build a house of cards thereon.-Jacobi.

The restless mind of man cannot but press a principle to the real limit of its application, even though centuries should intervene between the premises and the conclusion.-Liddon.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of a disease which does not at once suggest a cure.-Em

By the streets of "by and by," one arrives at the house of "never."-Cervantes.

When a fool has made up his mind the market has gone by.-Spanish Proverb.

Never put off till to-morrow that which you can do to-day.-Franklin.

Never do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow.-Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.Aaron Burr.

Undue procrastination indicates that a man does not see his way clearly; undue precipitation, that he does not see it at all.

Waste no vain words on the consumed time, but take the instant by the forward top; for on man's best resolved, best urged decrees, the inaudible and viewless foot of time steals, ere he can effect.-Shakespeare.

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.-Quesnel.

Procrastination says, "The next advantage we will take thoroughly."— Shakespeare.

He who prorogues the honesty of today till to-morrow, will probably prorogue his to-morrows to eternity.Lavater.

Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.-Charles Buxton.

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.-Hesiod.

How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!Max Müller.

There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.-Mad. Swetchine.

To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.-Tillotson.

Faith in to-morrow, instead of Christ, is Satan's nurse for man's perdition.G. B. Cheever.

Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer; next day the fatal precedent will plead; thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.-Young.

That we would do, we should do when we would; for this would changes, and hath abatements and delays as many, as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing.Shakespeare.

Unhappy he who does his work adjourn, and to to-morrow would the search delay: his lazy morrow will be like to-day.-Persius.

To-morrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.

Procrastination is the thief of time; year after year it steals, till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal state. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; et fifty chides his infamous delay, pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; in all the magnanimity of thought, resolves,

and re-resolves, then dies the same.Young.

Delay not till to-morrow to be wise; to-morrow's sun to thee may never rise. -Congreve.

Is not he imprudent, who, seeing the tide making toward him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him?Tillotson.

To-morrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.-Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those who own it.-Colton.

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PRODIGALITY.-The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.-Socrates.

The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs himself. The middle way is, justice to ourselves and others.-Bruyère.

We never find the Scriptures commending any prodigal but one, and him only for ceasing to be so.-His prodigality brought him to the swine and their trough, and from imitating their sensuality, by a natural consequence, to take up with their diet too.-South.

Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.-Colton.

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.-Goldsmith.

The difference between the covetous man and the prodigal, is, that the former never has money, and the latter will have none shortly-Ben Jonson.

Prodigality and dissipation, at last bring a man to the want of the necessities of life; he falls into poverty, misery, and abject disgrace; so that even his acquaintances, fearful of being obliged to restore to him what he has squandered, fly from him as a debtor

from his creditors, and he is left abandoned by all the world.-Volney.

The injury of prodigality leads to this, that he that will not economize will have to agonize.-Confucius.

Prodigality is the devil's steward and purse-bearer, ministering to all sorts of vice; and it is hard, if not impossible, for a prodigal person to be guilty of no other vice but prodigality. For men generally are prodigal because they are first intemperate, luxurious, or ambitious. And these, we know, are vices too costly to be kept and maintained at an easy rate; they must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man that feeds them starves for his pains.-South.

PROFANITY. Of all the dark catalogue of sins, there is not one more vile and execrable than profaneness. It commonly does, and loves to cluster with other sins; and he who can look up and insult his Maker to his face, needs but little improvement in guilt to make him a finished devil.-S. H. Cox.

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme rudely appealed to on each trifling theme. Maintain your rank, vulgarity despise.-To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.-Cowper.

Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word. Shakespeare.

Profanity is both an unreasonable and an unmanly sin, a violation alike of good taste and good morals; an offence against both man and God.-Some sins are productive of temporary profit or pleasure; but profaneness is productive of nothing unless it be shame on earth, and damnation in hell. It is the most gratuitous of all kinds of wickedness-a sort of pepper-corn acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the devil over those who indulge it.-Tryon Edwards.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low, that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.-Washington.

The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he catches without any bait or reward.-Horace Mann.

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Profit or pleasure there is none in swearing, nor anything in men's natural tempers to incite them to it. though some men pour out oaths so freely, as if they came naturally from them, yet surely no man is born of a swearing constitution.-Tillotson.

If you wish to fit yourself for the dark world of woe, it will be time enough to learn its language after you have prepared for it, by more decent sins than profaneness.-John Todd.

Blasphemous words betray the vain foolishness of the speaker.-Sir P. Sidney.

Common swearing, if it have any serious meaning at all, argues in man a perpetual distrust of his own reputation, and is an acknowledgment that he thinks his bare word not to be worthy of credit. And it is so far from adorning and filling a man's discourse, that it makes it look swollen and bloated, and more bold and blustering than becomes persons of genteel and good breeding.Tillotson.

Nothing is a greater, or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue. Jeremy Taylor.

Swearing is properly a superfluity of naughtiness, and can only be considered as a sort of pepper-corn sent, in acknowledgment of the devil's right of superiority-Robert Hall.

Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman.-I care not what his stamp may be in society, or what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts.-Despite all his refinement, the light and habitual taking of God's name in vain, betrays a coarse and brutal will.-E. H. Chapin.

Profanity never did any man the least good. No man is the richer, or happier, or wiser, for it. It commends no one to any society. It is disgusting to the refined; abominable to the good; insulting to those with whom we associate; degrading to the mind; unprofitable, needless, and injurious to society.

PROGRESS.-All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.-Gibbon.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off

those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.-Bulwer.

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.-Mazzini.

Progress is the activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.-Emerson.

True conservatism is substantial progress; it holds fast what is true and good in order to advance in both.-To cast away the old is not of necessity to obtain the new. To reject anything that is valuable, lessens the power of gaining more. That a thing is new does not of course commend; that it is old does not discredit. The test question is, "Is it true or good?"-Tryon Edwards.

The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone.-Colton.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.-Mad. de Staël.

Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the latter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought. -Gentz.

Who are they that would have all mankind look backward instead of forward, and regulate their conduct by things that have been done? those who are the most ignorant as to all things that are doing. Bacon said, time is the

greatest of innovators; he might also have said the greatest of improvers.Colton.

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward. H. Heine.

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.-Mazzini.

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves. Longfellow.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.-George Eliot.

Revolutions never go backwards.Emerson.

We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation, in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established and it is understood.-Colton.

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.-Burke.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development.-Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.-Bovee.

He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time, are three things that never stand still.-Colton.

Intercourse is the soul of progress.Buxton.

He is only advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, his blood warmer, his brain quicker, and his spirit entering into living peace.-Ruskin.

The individual and the race are always moving; and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heavens more immediately over us.-E. H. Chapin.

Every step of progress which the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to state.Wendell Philips.

Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.-Bovee.

The true law of the race is progress and development.-Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.Simms.

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.-He cannot stop at the beast.-Coleridge.

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.Margaret Fuller.

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.-Epictetus.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud.-You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Emerson.

We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves.-Fear, desire, and hope are still pushing us on toward the future-Montaigne.

Some falls are means the happier to rise. Shakespeare.

Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, intellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. No steps backward, is the rule of human history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time.Theodore Parker.

Society moves slowly toward civilization, but when we compare epochs half a century or even quarter of a century apart, we perceive many signs that progress is made.-Mrs. L. M. Child.

Westward the course of empire takes its way.-Bp. Berkeley.

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?"-This is always the question

of the wiseacres and knowing ones.But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.-Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.-Feuerbach.

The art of nations is cumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding but building itself on the work of the past.-Ruskin. By a peculiar prerogative, not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality, but all mankind together are making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older; so that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man, who never ceases to live and learn.-Pascal.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.-Hawthorne.

Progress is the real cure for an overestimate of ourselves.-G. Macdonald.

Progress is the law of life; man is not man as yet.-Robert Browning.

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind.-What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy, but he has also work of his own appointed to him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards—arts, establishments, opinions; nothing is ever completed, but completing.-Carlyle.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.-Goethe.

Works of true merit are seldom very popular in their own day; for knowledge is on the march and men of genius are the videttes that are far in advance of their comrades. They are not with them, but before them; not in the camp, but beyond it.-Colton.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects, so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.-Pascal.

Progress the onward stride of God.Victor Hugo.

The books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we

have quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on.-Emerson.

Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.-H. Mann.

All the grand agencies which the progress of mankind evolves are the aggregate result of countless wills, each of which, thinking merely of its own end, and perhaps fully gaining it, is at the same time enlisted by Providence in the secret service of the world.-James Martineau.

We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit.-This is what we mean by progress.-H. W. Beecher.

We cannot believe that the church of God is already possessed of all that light which God intends to give it; nor that all Satan's lurking-places have already been found out.-Jonathan Edwards.

If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word.-John Robinson.

All growth that is not toward God, is growing to decay.-G. Macdonald.

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.-Oliver Wendell Holmes.

PROMISE. He who promises runs in debt.-Talmud.

It is easy to promise, and alas! how easy to forget!-A. de Musset.

Unclaimed promises are like uncashed cheques; they will keep us from bankruptcy, but not from want.-Havergal. I had rather do and not promise, than promise and not do.-A. Warwick.

We promise according to our hopes, but perform according to our selfishness and our fears.-Rochefoucauld.