work shall not eat.--Harm watch, harm catch. --Curses always
recoil on the head of him who imprecates them.--If you put
a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens
itself around your own.--Bad counsel confounds the adviser.
--The Devil is an ass.

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action
is overmastered and characterized above our will by the law
of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public
good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism
in a line with the poles of the world.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will
or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of
his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him
who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but
the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or rather it
is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies,
a coil of cord in the boat, and, if the harpoon is not
good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the
steersman in twain or to sink the boat.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had
ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said
Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that
he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to
appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see
that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving
to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you
shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart,