God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and, understanding of his adversity, he would be senseless.—­St. Augustine.

Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.—­Proverbs 27:1.

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.—­Chapin.

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion?  Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news.  If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.—­Addison.

How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill! it is only the thought of the future that makes them great.—­Richter.

If there was no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.—­Richter.

Gambling.—­There is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card-table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them.  Hollow eyes, haggard looks and pale complexions are the natural indications.—­Steele.

Games of chance are traps to catch school boy novices and gaping country squires, who begin with a guinea and end with a mortgage.  —­Cumberland.

All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.—­Whately.

There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away.—­Chatfield.

I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand; and all that follows in his fatal career from that time is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.—­Cumberland.

It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.—­Washington.

Generosity.—­All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.—­Mrs. Jameson.

He who gives what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.—­Henry Taylor.

Generosity is only benevolence in practice.—­Bishop Ken.

The secret pleasure of a generous act is the great mind’s great bribe. 
—­Dryden.

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.—­South.

Some are unwisely liberal; and more delight to give presents than to pay debts.—­Sir P. Sidney.

When you give, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.—­Henry Taylor.