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

/>
The hearts of pretty women are like bonbons, wrapped up in enigmas.--_J. Petit Senn._

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.--_Dickens._

To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.--_Bossuet._

There are chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view.--_Dickens._

A willing heart adds feathers to the heel, and makes the clown a winged Mercury.--_Joanna Baillie._

Some people's hearts are shrunk in them like dried nuts. You can hear 'em rattle as they walk.--_Douglas_ _Jerrold._

~Heaven.~--The love of heaven makes one heavenly.--_Shakespeare._

Where is heaven? I cannot tell. Even to the eye of faith, heaven looks much like a star to the eye of flesh. Set there on the brow of night, it shines most bright, most beautiful; but it is separated from us by so great a distance as to be raised almost as high above our investigations as above the storms and clouds of earth.--_Rev. Dr. Guthrie._

When at eve at the bounding of the landscape the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope,--a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.--_Madame de Stael._

Few, without the hope of another life, would think it worth their while to live above the allurements of sense.--_Atterbury._

Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought. David and Isaiah will sweep nobler and loftier strains in eternity, and the minds of the saints, unclogged by cumbersome clay, will forever feast on the banquet of rich and glorious thought.--_Beecher._

~Heroes.~--A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.--_Chesterfield._

In analyzing the character of heroes it is hardly possible to separate altogether the share of Fortune from their own.--_Hallam._

Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.--_George Eliot._

No one is a hero to his valet.--_Madame de Sevigne._

~History.~--The Grecian history is a poem, Latin history a picture, modern history a chronicle.--_Chauteaubriand._

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!--_Coleridge._

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.--_Gibbon._

We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.--_Johnson._

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.--_Joubert._

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult,--it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it; and in historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.--_Froude._

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror which merely reflects objects, but of the judge who sees, listens, and decides.--_Lamartine._

In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.--_Macaulay._

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.--_Washington Irving._

History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.--_Macaulay._

Violent natures make history. The instruments they use almost always kill. Religion and philosophy have their vestments covered with innocent blood.--_X. Doudan._

Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with immortality.--_Bancroft._

What history is not richer, does not contain far more, than they by whom it is enacted, the present witnesses! What mortal understandeth his way?--_Jacobi._

He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.--_Macaulay._

~Home.~--Home is the grandest of all institutions.--_Spurgeon._

The first sure symptom of a mind in health is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.--_Young._

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.--_George Eliot._

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.--_Payne._

Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things; but don't scruple freedom in brightening home. Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are a sight day by day, and make life blither.--_Charles Buxton._

Home is the seminary of all other institutions.--_Chapin._

~Honesty.~--If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.--_Johnson._

Persons lightly dipped, not grained, in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness.--_Sir T. Browne._

Refined policy has ever been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.--_Burke._

Money dishonestly acquired is never worth its cost, while a good conscience never costs as much as it is worth.--_J. Petit Senn._

The honest man is a rare variety of the human species.--_Chamfort._

~Honor.~--Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Hope.~--Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year; "they are a sweet-smelling flower--a species of roses."--_Hawthorne._

Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.--_Bacon._

The mighty hopes that make us men.--_Tennyson._

Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health.--_Cowley._

I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.--_George Eliot._

Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret.--_George Eliot._

Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of reveling to-day on the profits of to-morrow.--_Johnson._

It is necessary to hope, though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.--_Johnson._

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.--_Victor Hugo._

~Humanity.~--A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds: therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.--_Bacon._

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.--_Burke._

Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.--_Steele._

I do not know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men, but 'tis always a mortification to me to observe that there is no perfection in humanity.--_Montagu._

The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Humility.~--It is from out the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, God comes in, and is everything in me.--_Mountford._

Should any ask me, What is the first thing in religion? I would reply, The first, second, and third thing therein, nay all, is humility.--_St. Augustine._

Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."--_Plutarch._

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.--_Franklin._

Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tigers' claws.--_Heinrich Heine._

Trees that, like the poplar, lift upwards all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their bows.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little and others much.--_Archbishop Leighton._

~Humor.~--The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.--_Coleridge._

The oil and wine of merry meeting.--_Washington Irving._

These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges