Amusement.—Amusement is the waking sleep of labor. When it absorbs thought, patience, and strength that might have been seriously employed, it loses its distinctive character, and becomes the task-master of idleness.—Willmott.
Analogy.—Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvelously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.—Colton.
Anarchy.—The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.—Carlyle.
Ancestry.—We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the furthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain the fouler the stream: and that first ancestor who has soiled his fingers by labor is no better than a parvenu.—Froude.
Breed is stronger than pasture.—George Eliot.
The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.—Sallust.
Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.—Colton.
Honorable descent is in all nations greatly esteemed; besides, it is to be expected that the children of men of worth will be like their fathers, for nobility is the virtue of a family.—Aristotle.
A long series of ancestors shows the native lustre with advantage; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine.—Dryden.
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.—Whately.