The Gentle Art of Pleasing

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Baker and Taylor Company, 1898 - Conduct of life - 173 pages

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Page 165 - Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypress lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Come; but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes...
Page 123 - He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you " That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and respect ; that demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling, and — embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner time — when the table is full.
Page 25 - Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip : and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.
Page 126 - The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give them ? We wish to be self -sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
Page 172 - The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south, the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it...
Page 172 - They live by law, not like the fool, But like the bard, who freely sings In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule, And finds in them, not bonds, but wings.
Page 53 - You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks.
Page 59 - Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable.
Page 20 - Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Page 53 - Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover" with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him— for he sets you right.

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