There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
Think today's interest rates are high? The Pilgrims borrowed $7000 from a London company of 70 investors in 1620, and devoted the next 23 years to repaying it at 43 percent.
Individuality has become the thing . . . dressing to look like you belong to a company . . . doesn't even enter the consciousness anymore. Clothes are more about having a life.
Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.
Faith is the leading grace in all our spiritual warfare and conflict; but all along, while we live, it hath faithful company that adheres to it and helps it. Love works, and hope works, and all other graces - self-denial, readiness to the cross - they all work and help faith. Yet when we come to die, faith is left alone. Now, try what faith will do. Not to be surprised with any thing is the substance of human wisdom; not to be surprised with death is a great part of the substance of our spiritual wisdom.