Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,
     A shining gloss, that fadeth suddenly;
     A flower that dies, when first it ’gins to bud;
     A brittle glass, that’s broken presently;
     A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
     Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour. 
     And as good lost is seld or never found,
     As fading gloss no rubbing will refresh,
     As flowers dead lie wither’d on the ground,
     As broken glass no cement can redress,
     So beauty blemish’d once, for ever’s lost,
     In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost. 
                       —­Shakespeare.

Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free! 
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all the adulteries of art;
That strike mine eyes, but not my heart. 

                                    —­Ben Jonson.

Benevolence.—­Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.—­Beecher.

The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect.  Satan has a fine intellect but not the image of God.—­Howells.

Animated by Christian motives and directed to Christian ends, it shall in no wise go unrewarded; here, by the testimony of an approving conscience; hereafter, by the benediction of our blessed Redeemer, and a brighter inheritance in His Father’s house.—­Bishop Mant.

God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.—­Colton.

The lower a man descends in his love, the higher he lifts his life.  —­W.R.  Alger.

There is nothing that requires so strict an economy as our benevolence.  We should husband our means as the agriculturalist his fertilizer, which if he spread over too large a superficies produces no crop, if over too small a surface, exuberates in rankness and in weeds.—­Colton.

The conqueror is regarded with awe, the wise man commands our esteem; but it is the benevolent man who wins our affections.—­From the French.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.  As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in, so deal with your compliments through life.  An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.  —­Thackeray.

You will find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and twopence.—­Sydney Smith.

Genuine benevolence is not stationary, but peripatetic.  It goeth about doing good.—­Nevins.