People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.—­Goldsmith.

A wise and good man will turn examples of all sorts to his own advantage.  The good he will make his patterns, and strive to equal or excel them.  The bad he will by all means avoid.—­Thomas A kempis.

None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.—­Franklin.

No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.—­Hosea Ballou.

I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.—­Herodotus.

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.—­H.W.  Shaw.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father’s vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before thy children’s faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents’ backs.—­Quarles.

Example is contagious behavior.—­Charles Reade.

The pulpit only “teaches” to be honest; the market-place “trains” to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training.  Christ never wrote a tract, but he went about doing good.  —­Horace Mann.

The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.—­Dr. Johnson.

Excess.—­Excess always carries its own retribution.—­Ouida.

The misfortune is, that when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety.—­Knox.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.—­Colton.

The body oppressed by excesses, bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with.  —­Horace.

Every morsel to a satisfied hunger is only a new labor to a tired digestion.—­South.

Let pleasure be ever so innocent, the excess is always criminal.  —­St. EVREMOND.

Exercise.—­A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick.—­Sir W. Temple.

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.—­Cicero.

There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.—­Beecher.