Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/20

12 Virtue is choked with foul ambition. —.

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases. —.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts. —.

Amusements are to religion like breezes of air to the flame; gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out. —.

Any pleasure which takes and keeps the heart from God is sinful, and unless forsaken, will be fatal to the soul. —.

People should be guarded against temptation to unlawful pleasures by furnishing them the means of innocent ones. In every community there must be pleasures, relaxations, and means of agreeable excitement; and if innocent are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Man was made to enjoy as well as labor; and the state of society should be adapted to this principle of human nature. —.

Recreation is not the highest kind of enjoyment; but in its time and place it is quite as proper as prayer. —.