Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/21

Rh Whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the "pleasing thing," not the useful thing. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other rougher sport; and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money—he never knows. He doesn't make it to do any thing with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask, "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket you get more runs. There is no use in the runs; but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there is no use in the money; but to have more of it than other people is the game. —.

An unsanctified temper is a fruitful source of error, and a mighty impediment to truth. —.

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion. —.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which make us stronger for the time, but leave us weaker forever after. —.

If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous. —.