Experience is the best teacher.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
The bravest are the tenderest.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Pride goeth before destruction.
The evil that men do lives after them.
4. Compare the abstract statement "Truths and high ethical principles are received by various men in various ways" with the concrete presentation of the same idea in Appendix 3. Which expression of the thought would be the more easily understood by the average person? Why? Which would you yourself remember the longer? Why?
5. Compare the statement "The second period of a human being's life is that of his reluctant attendance at school" with Shakespeare's picture of the schoolboy in Appendix 4.
6. Burke, near the close of his speech (Appendix 2), presents an idea, first in general terms, and then in specific terms, thus: "No contrivance can prevent the effect of…distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution, and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system." Find elsewhere in Burke's speech and in the editorial (Appendix I) general assertions which may be made more forceful by restatement in specific terms, and supply these specific restatements.
7. State in your own words the general thought or teaching of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15: 11-24.)
8. Make the following statements more concrete:
In front of our house was a tree that at a certain season of the year displayed highly colored foliage.
A celebrated orator said: "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
On the table were some viands that assailed my nostrils agreeably and others that put into my mouth sensations of anticipated enjoyment.
From this window above the street I can hear a variety of noises by day and a variety of different noises by night.