Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.—­F.W.  Faber.

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!—­Washington Irving.

Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man’s darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.—­Helps.

One kindly deed may turn
The fountain of thy soul
To love’s sweet day-star, that shall o’er thee burn
Long as its currents roll. 
—­Holmes.

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness around us at so little expense.  Some of them will inevitably fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others:  and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring.—­Bentham.

There is no beautifier of complexion or form or behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.—­Emerson.

Kisses.—­A kiss from my mother made me a painter.—­Benjamin West.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.—­Bovee.

It is as old as the creation, and yet as young and fresh as ever.  It pre-existed, still exists, and always will exist.  Depend upon it, Eve learned it in Paradise, and was taught its beauties, virtues, and varieties by an angel, there is something so transcendent in it.  —­Haliburton.

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection,—­these are love’s pretty ingredients for a kiss.—­Bovee.

You would think, if our lips were made of horn and stuck out a foot or two from our faces, kisses at any rate would be done for.  Not so.  No creatures kiss each other so much as the birds.—­Charles Buxton.

Knowledge.—­Knowledge is of two kinds.  We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.—­Boswell.

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.—­Chesterfield.

In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages, that strike your mind,
And which, perhaps, you may have reason
To think on, at another season,
Be not contented with the sight,
But take them down in black and white;
Such a respect is wisely shown,
As makes another’s sense one’s own. 

          
                          —­Byron.

Early knowledge is very valuable capital with which to set forth in life.  It gives one an advantageous start.  If the possession of knowledge has a given value at fifty, it has a much greater value at twenty-five; for there is the use of it for twenty-five of the most important years of your life; and it is worth more than a hundred per cent interest.  Indeed, who can estimate the interest of knowledge?  Its price is above rubies.—­Winslow.