VINCIBLENESS
Men are like timber. Oak will bear a stress that pine won’t, but there never was a stick of timber on the earth that could not be broken at some pressure. There never was a man born on the earth that could not be broken at some pressure—not always the same nor put in the same place. There is many a man who can not be broken by money pressure, but who can be by pressure of flattery. There is many a man impervious to flattery who is warped and biased by his social inclinations. There is many a man whom you can not tempt with red gold, but you can with dinners and convivialities. One way or the other, every man is vincible. There is a great deal of meaning in that simple portion of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.”—Henry Ward Beecher.
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VIRTUE IN POOR GUISES
I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature claims some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one’s hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most thoughtless, “These creatures have the same elements and capacities of goodness as yourselves; they are molded in the same form, and made of the same clay; and tho ten times worse than you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature amid the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten times better.” I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation.—Charles Dickens.
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VIRTUE NOT TO BE COERCED
The most temperate crowd of men I know is in Sing Sing. There isn’t a single thief in the Raymond Street Jail. But pull down the walls of Sing Sing, and then you will discover the difference between a man whose virtue depends upon a wall and the man whose goodness depends upon a will.—N. D. Hillis.
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VIRTUE, TIRING OF