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

fire; the palm-tree proves the better for pressing; chamomile, the more you tread it, the more you spread it. Such is the condition of all God's children: they are then most triumphant when most tempted; most glorious when most afflicted.--_Bogatzky._

That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation. For many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of a great calamity.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Nothing so much increases one's reverence for others as a great sorrow to one's self. It teaches one the depths of human nature. In happiness we are shallow, and deem others so.--_Charles Buxton._

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.--_Bovee._

Afflictions sent by Providence melt the constancy of the noble-minded but confirm the obduracy of the vile. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and in the strong manifestations of divine power Pharoah found his punishment, but David his pardon.--_Colton._

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.--_Tillotson._

To love all mankind, from the greatest to the lowest (or meanest), a cheerful state of being is required; but in order to see into mankind, into life, and, still more, into ourselves, suffering is requisite.--_Richter._

Count up man's calamities and who would seem happy? But in truth, calamity leaves fully half of your life untouched.--_Charles Buxton._

~Age.~--Wrinkles are the tomb of love.--_Sarros in._

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.--_George Eliot._

Autumnal green.--_Dryden._

Ye old men, brief is the space of life allotted to you; pass it as pleasantly as ye can, not grieving from morning till eve. Since time knows not how to preserve our hopes, but, attentive to its own concerns, flies away.--_Euripides._

The Grecian ladies counted their age from their marriage, not their birth.--_Homer._

The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in, so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater.--_South._

Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they are strongest for things a long way off.--_George Eliot._

Serene, and safe from passion's stormy rage, how calm they glide into the port of age!--_Shenstone._

Providence gives us notice by sensible declensions, that we may disengage from the world by degrees.--_Jeremy Collier._

Age oppresses by the same degrees that it instructs us, and permits not that our mortal members, which are frozen with our years, should retain the vigor of our youth.--_Dryden._

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice, for age whitens only the hair.--_J. Petit Senn._

Up to forty a woman has only forty springs in her heart. After that age she has only forty winters.--_Arsene Houssaye._

I love everything that's old. Old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.--_Goldsmith._

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.--_J. Petit Senn._

There are two things which grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to their beauty.--_Chateaubriand._

~Agitation.~--Agitation is the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws.--_Sir R. Peel._

Agitation is the method that plants the school by the side of the ballot-box.--_Wendell Phillips._

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.--_Wendell Phillips._

~Agriculture.~--Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures, since the productions of nature are the materials of art.--_Gibbon._

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation but the only riches she can call her own.--_Johnson._

Let the farmer for evermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.--_Thomas Jefferson._

~Allegory.~--Allegories and spiritual significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. Allegories are fine ornaments, but not of proof.--_Luther._

The allegory of a sophist is always screwed; it crouches and bows like a snake, which is never straight, whether she go, creep, or lie still; only when she is dead, she is straight enough.--_Luther._

~Ambition.~--It was not till after the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi that the idea entered my mind that I might become a decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose for the first time the spark of great ambition.--_Napoleon._

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.--_Burke._

If there is ever a time to be ambitious, it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is hard. Fight in darkness; fight when you are down; die hard, and you won't die at all.--_Beecher._

By that sin angels fell.--_Shakespeare._

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.--_Hume._

An ardent thirst of honor; a soul unsatisfied with all it has done, and an unextinguished desire of doing more.--_Dryden._

Ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration.--_George MacDonald._

Think not ambition wise, because 'tis brave.--_Sir W. Davenant._

Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise.--_Massinger._

~America.~--Child of the earth's old age.--_L. E. Langdon._

The name--American, must always exalt the pride of patriotism.--_Washington._

In America we see a country of which it has been truly said that in no other are there so few men of great learning and so few men of great ignorance.--_Buckle._

America is as yet in the youth and gristle of her strength.--_Burke._

If all Europe were to become a prison, America would still present a loop-hole of escape; and, God be praised! that loop-hole is larger than the dungeon itself.--_Heinrich Heine._

Ere long, thine every stream shall find a tongue, land of the many waters.--_Hoffman._

America is rising with a giant's strength. Its bones are yet but cartilages.--_Fisher Ames._

~Amusement.~--Amusement is the waking sleep of labor. When it absorbs thought, patience, and strength that might have been seriously employed, it loses its distinctive character, and becomes the task-master of idleness.--_Willmott._

~Analogy.~--Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvelously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.--_Colton._

~Anarchy.~--The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.--_Carlyle._

~Ancestry.~--We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the furthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain the fouler the stream: and that first ancestor who has soiled his fingers by labor is no better than a parvenu.--_Froude._

Breed is stronger than pasture.--_George Eliot._

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.--_Sallust._

Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.--_Colton._

Honorable descent is in all nations greatly esteemed; besides, it is to be expected that the children of men of worth will be like their fathers, for nobility is the virtue of a family.--_Aristotle._

A long series of ancestors shows the native lustre with advantage; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine.--_Dryden._

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.--_Whately._

~Ancients.~--In tragedy and satire I maintain, against some critics, that this age and the last have excelled the ancients; and I would instance in Shakespeare of the former, in Dorset of the latter.--_Dryden._

Though the knowledge they have left us be worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its treasures; they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after-ages.--_Locke._

~Angels.~--In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put in theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.--_George Eliot._

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.--_Milton._

~Anger.~--If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.--_Beecher._

Temperate anger well becomes the wise.--_Philemon._

When anger rushes, unrestrained, to action, like a hot steed, it stumbles in its way.--_Savage._

Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are bitterer than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim.--_Charles Buxton._

Above all, gentlemen, no heat.--_Talleyrand._

Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Keep cool and you command everybody.--_St. Just._

I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; when I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.--_Luther._

When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Angling.~--I give up fly-fishing; it is a light, volatile, dissipated pursuit. But ground-bait with a good steady float that never bobs without a bite is an occupation for a bishop, and in no way interferes with sermon-making.--_Sydney Smith._

He that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.--_Izaak Walton._

Idle time not idly spent.--_Sir Henry Wotton._

To see the fish cut with her golden oars the silver stream and greedily devour the treacherous bait.--_Shakespeare._

~Anticipation.~--It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow's burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear.--_George MacDonald._

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself.--_Herder._

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first instance, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, nature cooks it for us.--_Goldsmith._

We are apt