Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness: Being a Series of Lectures to Youth of Both Sexes, on Character, Principles, Associates, Amusements, Religion, and MarriageAustin, John Mather
Philosophy
Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness: Being a Series of Lectures to Youth of Both Sexes, on Character, Principles, Associates, Amusements, Religion, and Marriage
Austin, John Mather
Conduct of life
There is no greater folly than to select a wife for mere personal
beauty alone. Beauty will always have its attractions; and when
connected with an amiable disposition and useful qualifications,
its influence, cannot be objected to. But when unaccompanied with
these characteristics, its power is to be resisted, and the heart
steeled against all its fascinations. The young man who permits
himself to fall so desperately in love with a lady, on account of
mere personal beauty, as to marry her, despite the counsel of his
friends, and when he himself sees, or might see, a sad want of
other and more valuable qualifications, commits an error, the
wretched effects of which will be experienced through life. When
this outward beauty loses its charm and passes away, as it will
in a brief space of time, what has he left? A cross-grained,
ill-natured, fault-finding, petulant, selfish wife, who will prove
a "thorn in his side," during all his days, rather than a loving
and valuable companion.
Good looks are always attractive. But there is something still more
desirable in a wife, viz., a sweet disposition and an even temper,
a gentle, affectionate heart, and a well-cultivated and enlightened
mind. Let young men, by all means, seek for such qualifications in
those whom they would choose for their companions. In these
characteristics there is a beauty and loveliness which will not
fade away with the consummation of marriage; but they will grow
brighter and more attractive from year to year, during all life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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