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

recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.--_Coleridge._

We, by art, unteach what Nature taught.--_Dryden._

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.--_Alcott._

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.--_Emerson._

Nature is an absolute and jealous divinity. Lovely, eloquent, and instructive in all her inequalities and contrasts, she hides her face, and remains mute to those who, by attempting to re-fashion her, profane her.--_Mazzini._

~Necessity.~--Necessity is a bad recommendation to favors of any kind, which as seldom fall to those who really want them, as to those who really deserve them.--_Fielding._

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.--_Johnson._

When God would educate a man He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation.--_Celia Burleigh._

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.--_Joubert._

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.--_Tennyson._

~Neglect.~--He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.--_Johnson._

~News.~--Give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.--_Shakespeare._

~Newspapers.~--In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.--_Heinrich Heine._

Before this century shall run out journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth; it will spread from Pole to Pole, suddenly burning with the fervor of soul which made it burst forth; it will be the reign of the human mind in all its plenitude; it will not have time to ripen, to accumulate in the form of a book; the book will arrive too late; the only book possible from day to day is a newspaper.--_Lamartine._

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.--_Napoleon._

They preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war with an authority which only the first Reformers and a long-past class of Popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the discipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition the new preachers somewhat resemble the mendicant Friars of old times; outwardly, full of holy zeal; inwardly, not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things.--_Carlyle._

These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.--_Johnson._

~Night.~--Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.--_Mrs. Barbauld._

The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night.--_Longfellow._

Sable-vested night, eldest of things.--_Milton._

O mysterious night! Thou art not silent: many tongues hast thou.--_Joanna Baillie._

Night, when deep sleep falleth on men.--_Bible._

~No.~--No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at once.--_Walter Scott._

Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.--_Spurgeon._

The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No. She who explains wants to be convinced.--_Alfred de Musset._

~Nobility.~--Virtue is the first title of nobility.--_Moliere._

~Nonsense.~--Nonsense is to sense as shade to light--it heightens effect.--_Fred. Saunders._

~Nothing.~--There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account.--_Fontaine._

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.--_Richter._

~Novels.~--Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them--almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men,--Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians,--are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.--_Thackeray._

We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.--_Balzac._

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.--_Swift._

~Novelty.~--The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you drink after it?" The two points of practical wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as as much possible, the sources of novelty.--_Ruskin._

Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure.--_South._


O.

~Obedience.~--To obey is better than sacrifice.--_Bible._

How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice, it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience.--_George Eliot._

~Oblivion.~--Oblivion is the flower that grows best on graves.--_George Sand._

The grave of human misery.--_Alfred de Musset._

~Observation.~--It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men,--the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.--_Samuel Smiles._

Observation made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over fearful of a little dust.--_Colton._

Each one sees what he carries in his heart.--_Goethe._

~Occupation.~--The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.--_Rousseau._

The busy have no time for tears.--_Byron._

One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman.--_Lacretelle._

~Ocean.~--Wave rolling after wave in torrent rapture.--_Milton._

It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies.--_Barry Cornwall._

The visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads.--_Shakespeare._

~Office.~--The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors.--_Walpole._

~Opinion.~--The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.--_Heinrich Heine._

Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.--_Socrates._

Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed?--_George Eliot._

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.--_Joubert._

It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.--_Colton._

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.--_Montaigne._

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.--_Voltaire._

If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.--_Swift._

One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy.--_Burton._

It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won.--_Goethe._

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.--_Mme. Roland._

~Opportunity.~--The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.--_Vieland._

Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves.--_Rochefoucauld._

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.--_George Eliot._

There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window.--_Cardinal Imperiali._

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.--_George Eliot._

Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.--_Jeremy Collier._

A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity."--_Moore._

Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.--_Lord Stanley._

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.--_Charles Buxton._

~Opposition.~--The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat,--men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority--demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice--comes graceful and beloved as a bride!--_Emerson._

Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Oratory.~--Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.--_Cicero._

Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a positive pleasure in catching resemblances for themselves.--_Aristotle._

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.--_Colton._

An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.--_Theophrastus._

When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"--_Colton._

Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.--_Henry Clay._