We should only utter higher maxims so far as they can benefit the world. The rest we should keep within ourselves, and they will diffuse over our actions a lustre like the mild radiance of a hidden sun. Goethe.
We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it. Bovee.
We should seem ignorant that we oblige, and leave the mind at full liberty to give or refuse its affections; for constraint may indeed leave the receiver still grateful but it will certainly produce disgust. Goldsmith.
We should take a prudent care for the future, 5 but so as to enjoy the present. It is no part of wisdom to be miserable to-day, because we may happen to be so to-morrow. (?)
We should, to the last moment of our lives, continue a settled intercourse with all the true examples of grandeur. Sir Joshua Reynolds.
We shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. Sen.
We sink to rise. Emerson.
We smile at the satire expended upon the follies of others, but we forget to weep at our own. Mme. Necker.
We sometimes meet an original gentleman, 10 who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them. Emerson.
We sometimes see a change of expression in our companion, and say, His father or his mother comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin—seven or eight ancestors at least—and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is. Emerson.