Pearls of Thought, Maturin Murray Ballou [historical books to read txt] 📗

Remember that the world only took six days to create. Ask me for whatever you please except _time_: that is the only thing which is beyond my power.--_Napoleon._

True dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wares, and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch.--_Bacon._

~Disposition.~--A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.--_Fielding._

A good disposition is more valuable than gold; for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.--_Addison._

~Distrust.~--As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.--_Wendell Phillips._

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?--_George Eliot._

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.--_Johnson._

~Doubt.~--Remember Talleyrand's advice, "If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not--don't!" The advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Doubt is hell in the human soul.--_Gasparin._

Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul.--_J. Petit Senn._

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.--_Shakespeare._

The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.--_X. Doudan._

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.--_Tennyson._

Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt.--_Victor Hugo._

~Dreams.~--Children of night, of indigestion bred.--_Churchill._

A world of the dead in the hues of life.--_Mrs. Hemans._

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.--_Milton._

Dreams always go by contraries, my dear.--_Samuel Lover._

We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.--_Sir T. Browne._

The mockery of unquiet slumbers.--_Shakespeare._

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.--_Tennyson._

~Dress.~--It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.--_Rousseau._

~Duty.~--Stern daughter of the voice of God.--_Wordsworth._

Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life.--_Gladstone._

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.--_Bible._

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.--_George Eliot._

Do the duty which lies nearest to thee.--_Goethe._

Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would.--_George MacDonald._

To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads!--_Byron._

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty to God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.--_Thomas Paine._

There is not a moment without some duty.--_Cicero._

If doing what ought to be done be made the first business, and success a secondary consideration,--is not this the way to exalt virtue?--_Confucius._

The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in what is remote; the work of duty lies in what is easy, and men seek for it in what is difficult.--_Mencius._

Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.--_Dr. Vinet._

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.--_Beecher._

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; the charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers.--_Wordsworth._

Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother.--_George Eliot._


E.

~Ear.~--A side intelligencer.--_Lamb._

Eyes and ears, two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores of will and judgment.--_Shakespeare._

The wicket of the soul.--_Sir J. Davies._

The road to the heart.--_Voltaire._

~Early-rising.~--Early-rising not only gives us more life in the same number of our years, but adds likewise to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same measure of time, but increases also the measure.--_Colton._

The famous Apollonius being very early at Vespasian's gate, and finding him stirring, from thence conjectured that he was worthy to govern an empire, and said to his companion, "This man surely will be emperor, he is so early."--_Caussin._

When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.--_Wellington._

The difference between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning, for the space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to a man's life.--_Doddridge._

Whoever has tasted the breath of morning knows that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of the day are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of nature that we should enjoy and profit by them.--_Southey._

~Economy.~--Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.--_Spurgeon._

Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.--_Franklin._

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out; but the disease is incurable.--_Shakespeare._

The back-door robs the house.--_George Herbert._

The world abhors closeness, and all but admires extravagance. Yet a slack hand shows weakness, a tight hand, strength.--_Charles Buxton._

~Education.~--Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.--_Sydney Smith._

Still I am learning.--_Motto of Michael Angelo._

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.--_Daniel Webster._

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.--_Mme. de Stael._

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, and the hero,--the wise, the good, and the great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred and brought to light.--_Addison._

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.--_Ben Jonson._

I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read _any_ English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.--_Johnson._

The essential difference between a good and a bad education is this, that the former draws on the child to learn by making it sweet to him; the latter drives the child to learn, by making it sour to him if he does not.--_Charles Buxton._

Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Education is all paint: it does not alter the nature of the wood that is under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them; and it is sometimes so long before you get to see under the varnish!--_Lady Hester Stanhope._

~Eloquence.~--The poetry of speech.--_Byron._

This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration, and awe; that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity.--_Goldsmith._

~Eminence.~--I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power from an obscure condition ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The Temple of Honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.--_Burke._

~Emotions.~--All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.--_Richter._

Emotion has no value in the Christian system save as it stands connected with right conduct as the cause of it. Emotion is the bud, not the flower, and never is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of personal morals.--_W. H. H. Murray._

There are three orders of emotions: those of pleasure, which refer to the senses; those of harmony, which refer to the mind; and those of happiness, which are the natural result of a union between harmony and pleasure.--_Chapone._

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow; whether raised at a puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levelers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Employment.~--The wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life worth leading.--_Paley._

Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.--_Blair._

~Emulation.~--Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living.--_Fuseli._

~Enemies.~--It is the enemy whom we do not suspect who is the most dangerous.--_Rojas._

~Energy.~--The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another--between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant--is energy, invincible determination; a purpose once formed, and then death or victory. This quality will do anything that is to be done in the world; and no two-legged creature can become a man without it.--_Charles Buxton._

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.--_Napoleon._

To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is