Everybody Hates A Prodigy, Detests An Old

It Hardly Needs Explaining At Length, I Think, How Much Authority Or Beauty Is Added To Style By The Timely Use Of Proverbs. In The First Place Who Does Not See What Dignity They Confer On Style By Their Antiquity Alone?... And So To Interweave Adages Deftly And Appropriately Is To Make The Language As A Whole Glitter With Sparkles From Antiquity, Please Us With The Colours Of The Art Of Rhetoric, Gleam With Jewel-like Words Of Wisdom, And Charm Us With Titbits Of Wit And Humour.

Ask A Wise Man To Dinner And He'll Upset Everyone By His Gloomy Silence Or Tiresome Questions. Invite Him To A Dance And You'll Have A Camel Prancing About. Haul Him Off To A Public Entertainment And His Face Will Be Enough To Spoil The People's Entertainment.

They May Attack Me With An Army Of Six Hundred Syllogisms; And If I Do Not Recant, They Will Proclaim Me A Heretic.

For Them It's Out-of-date And Outmoded To Perform Miracles; Teaching The People Is Too Like Hard Work, Interpreting The Holy Scriptures Is For Schoolmen And Praying Is A Waste Of Time; To Shed Tears Is Weak And Womanish, To Be Needy Is Degrading; To Suffer Defeat Is A Disgrace And Hardly Fitting For One Who Scarcely Permits The Greatest Of Kings To Kiss The Toes Of His Sacred Feet; And Finally, Death Is An Unattractive Prospect, And Dying On A Cross Would Be An Ignominious End.

Give Light, And The Darkness Will Disappear Of Itself.