Various

“ The spirit of Parrhasius was aroused and, standing erect in all the dignity of conscious equality of genius, full-fledged and eager to soar, he boldly repelled the insults of Zeuxis, and with a voice that reached the listening ear of his beloved, exclaimed:
"Know, proud man, that thou, the unrivaled master of Greece, of the world, wilt yet envy the talent and fame of Parrhasius, though a poor plebeian boy of Ephesus!" ”

“ Stranger still, it has stood in the midst of warring nations, and yet remained as independent as the United States. It has heard the roar of Napoleon's artillery. There are famous battle-fields on the north of it and on the south. Great armies from France and Spain and England have swung past it on all sides. Vast nations have arisen and gone down again to oblivion, and yet this baby republic goes on for centuries—without growth and without death.
Goust—which is the name of this wonderful little atom among the nations of Europe—is situated in the Lower Pyrenees, between France and Spain. ”

“ In the words of one of the most winning writers of English that ever existed—Cardinal Newman—the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression.
Literature consists of all the books—and they are not so many—where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. ”

“ What shall we think of forty millions of people who complain bitterly of the oppression of a single individual!
Cupidity, envy, vanity, false glory, pursue them like furies through this stormy life; they talk incessantly of virtue, generosity, and love, while, like an incurable cancer, envy, interest, and ambition are gnawing the inner folds of their hearts. They carefully conceal their wickedness, and feign a virtue which they do not possess; they reciprocally lavish flatteries on one another. ”

“ Ah, Peter, Peter, you watered the drink!"
"No, indeed, father; but it's the taste is lavin' you," says Peter; and again a low chorus of compassionate pity murmured through the cabin.
"Well, I'm nearly done now," says my father: "there's only one little plot of ground remaining; and I put it on you, Peter—as ye wish to live a good man, and die with the same easy heart I do now—that ye mind my last words to ye here. Are ye listening? Are the neighbors listening? Is Billy Scanlan listening?"
"Yes, sir. Yes, father. We're all minding," chorused the audience. ”

“ In the creative play of reason and imagination, in their marvelous productions of speculation, science, and art, in their exaltation of mind above sense and of spirit above matter, in their conception of a harmonious development of all the rich and varied powers of man—in all these the Greeks have left to mankind a legacy as priceless as it is to-day vital and forever imperishable. ”

“ Zeuxis was the pride and boast of Athens. His pencil had no rival, and thrice he had been crowned victor of the Olympic games. The dwellings of the rich and noble, and the shrines and temples of the gods, were decorated with the fruits of his genius. He was courted by the wise and powerful. Artists and magi came from distant cities to look upon the Athenian painter, whose name was sounded worldwide. ”

“ Writing in the New York Times, Mr. de Kay says:
Plainly enough there is a field scarcely plowed at all in the arts and crafts. These arts in the Middle Ages, and latterly in Japan and India, absorbed and absorb the energies of the cleverest hands and brightest minds; but in America and England to-day are neglected for the fine arts, because the rare prizes in the latter, whether of fame or of wealth, dazzle the imagination. ”

“ Is it not about time to show that even a democracy can learn something? Certainly if we can convince this community that the most crying need is a thorough regeneration of the industrial arts, the object will be attained. For though democracies are often clumsy, when they once strike the right path they rush forward to the highest places with a speed and an irresistible force no other communities attain. ”

“ To-day it burns with volcanic violence, to-morrow it is but a glimmering taper; to-day its intensity warms the most cheerless cabin of poverty, to-morrow its flickering rays will barely illumine the most cheerful abode of wealth. It is a delusive light, that too often dazzles to blind. ”

“ Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seem best frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a fact with which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in The Scrap Book the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to let ourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation in magazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction. ”

“ In line with President Schurman's criticism of American culture is the plea by Charles de Kay, the New York art critic, for more attention to the industrial arts. His argument is that out of the arts and crafts the fine arts naturally develop; that out of the artist-artisan comes the highest class of artist, as, for example, Augustus Saint Gaudens, who began as a cameo cutter. To ignore the industrial arts is, so to speak, to leave out of count that solid middle class upon which alone the aristocracy of art can safely rest. ”

“ President Eliot, in a recent address before the student body at Harvard, said:
The very rich are by no means the healthiest members of the community, and to escape the perils of luxurious living requires unusual will-power and prudence.
Great capital at the disposal of a single individual confers on its possessor great power over the course of industrial development, over his fellow men and sometimes over the course of great public events, like peace or war between nations. It enables a man to do good or harm, to give joy or pain, and places him in a position to be feared or looked up to. ”

“ The sun had journeyed half his way toward the meridian, when amid the thundering shouts of applause of the populace, Zeuxis, with a proud and haughty step, left the pavilion of the judges, and with a tablet in his hand, on which was painted a cluster of grapes, proceeded to the plain. Upon a small column erected for the purpose, near a grove, the artist placed his painting, and, withdrawing the curtain that concealed it, returned to the pavilion. The multitude was astonished, for they expected to feast their eyes on the production of the great artist. ”

“ It can be coped with only by organizations apart from the existing schools, which might attempt for the youthful artisan what the art schools attempt for the training of architects, sculptors, and painters.
It is the fate of democracies to waste energy and attack each problem by the wrong side. Commend us to a democracy to put the cart before the horse every time! In the arts we have been doing this imbecile trick steadily, persistently, for a hundred years, trying to foster the fine arts while our minor arts and crafts are too contemptible for criticism. ”

“ The resignation of Sir Francis C. Burnand, for twenty-five years editor of London Punch, reminds one how little it has been subject to the vicissitudes of journalism. As if by fore-ordination, the admirable parodist, Owen Seaman, takes the head of the historic table, and Punch will, if anything, be more Punch than ever. Others may change, but Punch retains a kind of Olympian uniformity. From its first number, sixty-five years ago, to the last, its outward appearance and inward savor are practically identical. England has been in conspiracy to provide it with talent. ”

“ And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. ”

“ Speed is the magician that makes the world smaller. Compare the hourly runs of the old stage-coaches with the hourly runs of the modern railroad train, and we can figure without difficulty just how much the world has shrunk in seventy-five years—though, as always happens in magic, the shrinkage is apparent, not real. ”

“ There is, of course, the prevailing American view that Punch is dull. Dull it is, in the sense that the best fun of the most jocose family may be merely tantalizing to the outsider. A nudge to the initiated may be sufficient to recall jokes proved by a thousand laughs; the uninitiated needs a clue. Now, Punch's family is London—a family whose acquaintance is tolerably worth while—and probably no one who has not imaginatively made himself familiar with the mood of London has any business with Punch at all. ”

“ Pure affection comes not from the dross of earth, the wealth, power, and pageantry of individuals or of society, nor from the ephemeral loveliness of the human form. Such is, at best, the gross counterfeit of love, and undeserving its divine name. ”

“ Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, the character-writers, the maxim-writers, the great political orators—they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know man and to know human nature.
What I venture to press upon you is that it requires no preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman—unless household circumstances are more than usually vexatious and unfavorable—to get at least half an hour out of a solid busy day for good and disinterested reading. ”

“ England has six hundred and twenty-five to the square mile, and is steadily growing. If the present ratio of increase continues, think of the incalculable growth that the coming years will bring to the great Southwestern State!
If Texas were peopled as densely as New York State, she would have forty-two million inhabitants—more than ten times what she has. Settled as closely as Massachusetts, she would have one hundred millions; as closely as England, one hundred and sixty-six millions. This American State is destined to rank with the powers of the world. ”

“ At a time when six-day bicycle races, the so-called brutality of modern football, and endurance tests of the automobile excite such a degree of popular interest throughout the English-speaking world, it might not be amiss to glance over the shoulder occasionally at a few records made by some mute four-footed or feathered champions who have established records in fields in which Nature, herself, as umpire, read the inexorable law of necessity. ”

“ And, discussing the struggle for success, what is success? Is it money? Some of you have all you need.
Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money, nothing else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use it. ”

“ Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and wrathful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights—am I to be loaded with calumny, and not to be suffered to resent or repel it? ”

“ German statisticians, who have long been noted for their tendency to turn their searchlights on subjects that might better be left alone, have made another little incursion into the field of woman's vanity. In short, they have been calculating what part of a woman's life is spent in looking at herself in a mirror.
She begins as a rule at six years. From six to ten she has a daily average of seven minutes. From ten to fifteen she devotes a quarter of an hour to her glass.
At twenty she certainly spends thirty minutes daily admiring herself, and when past twenty a whole hour. ”

“ Both Bell and Holland were called fools and dreamers thirty years ago, because they believed it possible to send words along a wire and travel under the sea. To-day they are regarded as practical men of affairs—wealthy and honored. It is a striking fact that both of these veteran inventors are looking for bigger things from the future than those which they dug from the past. The air-ship age, they say, is at hand, and the human race may get ready to fly. ”

“ Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid-sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. ”

“ It is the homesickness for London that extends the subscription list to the bounds of the empire; it is the desire to know what London thinks of itself, of the provinces, of the world, that makes readers for Punch in every land. ”

“ No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war. ”

“ Extreme poverty may sometimes hamper a youth's progress, but, in my opinion, he is far more likely to make his way in the world if he starts with the proverbial half-a-crown in his pocket than with a thousand-pound note. ”

“ It seems to me that the American people have been surfeited with humor. So many brilliant men have written their jokes for so long that they have become jaded. I thought at first that the American sense of humor was radically less subtle than ours in England, but now I know better. ”