y be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day
less, and in a short time is lost forever.--_Johnson._

Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its
comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skillful
hand to construct the skeleton.--_Willmott._

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is
to continue in a state of childhood all our days.--_Plutarch._

~Birth.~--Noble in appearance, but this is mere outside; many noble born
are base.--_Euripides._

~Blessings.~--The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come
to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to
the tail of it.--_Charles Lamb._

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our
having only regular desires.--_St. Augustine._

We mistake the gratuitous blessings of Heaven for the fruits of our own
industry.--_L'Estrange._

Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods,
operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as
benefits to the just.--_Plato._

How blessings brighten as they take their flight!--_Young._

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many: not on
your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.--_Charles Dickens._

~Blush.~--The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame.--_Mrs.
Balfour._

I have mark'd a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face; a
thousand innocent shames, in angel whiteness, bear away those
blushes.--_Shakespeare._

The glow of the angel in woman.--_Mrs. Balfour._

Such blushes as adorn the ruddy welkin or the purple morn.--_Ovid._

Luminous escapes of thought.--_Moore._

~Blustering.~--Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the
field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great
cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and
are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the
only inhabitants of the field--that, of course, they are many in
number,--or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled,
meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the
hour.--_Burke._

There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what is
loud and senseless talking any other than a way of
braying.--_L'Estrange._

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help
them.--_George Eliot._