oyment and a sense of superiority. It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter.—Ruskin.

Curiosity.—A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.—Pope.

The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.—Johnson.

Custom.—The despotism of custom is on the wane; we are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.—John Stuart Mill.

Immemorial custom is transcendent law.—Menu.

In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.—Emerson.

Custom doth make dotards of us all.—Carlyle.

Cynics.—It will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.—Dickens.

Cynicism is old at twenty.—Bulwer-Lytton.[Pg 56]

D.

Dandy.—A dandy is a clothes-wearing man,—a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person, and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object,—the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.—Carlyle.

A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool's coat still.—Rivaro