Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it.—Lamartine.
Presentiment.—We walk in the midst of secrets—we are encompassed with mysteries. We know not what takes place in the atmosphere that surrounds us—we know not what relations it has with our minds. But one thing is sure, that, under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason, and that the power is given it to antedate the future,—ay, to see into the future.—Goethe.
We should not neglect a presentiment. Every man has within him a spark of divine radiance which is often the torch which illumines the darkness of our future.—Madame de Girardin.
Press.—The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.—B. Disraeli.
Presumption.—Presumption is our natural and original disease.—Montaigne.
Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Cæsar comes once to pass the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not how much he trashes further.—South.
He that presumes steps into the throne of God.—South.
Pretence.—As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Pretension.—Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.—L'Estrange.
Pride.—I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.—Ruskin.