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

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It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client!--_Goldsmith._

~Originality.~--Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.--_Voltaire._

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.--_George Eliot._

The most original writers borrowed one from another. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto Boiardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.--_Voltaire._

All originality is estrangement.--_G. H. Lawes._


P.

~Pain.~--Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical, and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.--_Heinrich Heine._

The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Pardon.~--Pardon is the virtue of victory.--_Mazzini._

The heart has always the pardoning power.--_Madame Swetchine._

The offender never pardons.--_George Herbert._

Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

These evils I deserve, yet despair not of his final pardon whose ear is ever open, and his eye gracious to readmit the supplicant.--_Milton._

Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within.--_Dryden._

~Parent.~--The sacred books of the ancient Persians say: If you would be holy instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.--_Montesquieu._

~Partiality.~--Partiality in a parent is commonly unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools, and the children that are least cockered make the best and wisest men.--_L'Estrange._

As there is a partiality to opinions, which is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is also a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial to knowledge.--_Locke._

Partiality is properly the understanding's judging according to the inclination of the will and affections, and not according to the exact truth of things, or the merits of the cause.--_South._

~Parting.~--In every parting there is an image of death.--_George Eliot._

~Party.~--He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man.--_Lavater._

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes.--_Colton._

~Passions.~--Passions makes us feel but never see clearly.--_Montesquieu._

Passions are likened best to floods and streams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.--_Sir Walter Raleigh._

The passions are the voice of the body.--_Rousseau._

The advice given by a great moralist to his friend was, that he should compose his passions; and let that be the work of reason which would certainly be the work of time.--_Addison._

A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.--_Burke._

There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.--_George Eliot._

The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.--_Longfellow._

"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger.--_Joubert._

It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Past.~--Let the dead past bury its dead.--_Longfellow._

Oh vanished times! splendors eclipsed for aye! Oh suns behind the horizon that have set.--_Victor Hugo._

It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.--_Martial._

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.--_George Eliot._

~Patience.~--There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.--_George Eliot._

Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ills.--_Johnson._

There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.--_Ruskin._

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.--_Epictetus._

Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits.--_G. MacDonald._

'Tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself.--_Shakespeare._

He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing.--_George Herbert._

Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot.--_Joubert._

God is with the patient.--_Koran._

Patience, the second bravery of man, is, perhaps, greater than the first.--_Antonio de Solis._

Patience--the truest fortitude.--_Milton._

~Patriotism.~--In peace patriotism really consists only in this--that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house.--_Goethe._

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.--_Decatur._

How dear is fatherland to all noble hearts.--_Voltaire._

Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!--_Daniel Webster._

There can be no affinity nearer than our country.--_Plato._

Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.--_Gladstone._

~Peace.~--They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.--_Bible._

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.--_Shakespeare._

Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breed.--_Spenser._

Peace gives food to the husbandman, even in the midst of rocks; war brings misery to him, even in the most fertile plains.--_Menander._

Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth.--_Shakespeare._

A land rejoicing and a people blest.--_Pope._

~Pedant.~--As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too.--_S. Smith._

With loads of learned lumber in his head.--_Pope._

It is not a circumscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant.--_Richter._

~Perfection.~--It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it can never be reached.--_Johnson._

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.--_Alfred de Musset._

That historian who would describe a favorite character as faultless raises another at the expense of himself. Zeuxis made five virgins contribute their charms to his single picture of Helen; and it is as vain for the moralist to look for perfection in the mind, as for the painter to expect to find it in the body.--_Colton._

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.--_Michael Angelo._

He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.--_Spurgeon._

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.--_Tennyson._

~Persecution.~--Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters forever.--_Hazlitt._

~Perseverance.~--Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds.--_Bacon._

Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.--_Burke._

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.--_Jeremy Collier._

Much rain wears the marble.--_Shakespeare._

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.--_George Eliot._

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Perseverance is not always an indication of great abilities. An indifferent poet is invulnerable to a repulse, the want of sensibility in him being what a noble self-confidence was in Milton. These excluded suitors continue, nevertheless, to hang their garlands at the gate, to anoint the door-post, and even kiss the very threshold of her home, though the Muse beckons them not in.--_Wordsworth._

~Perverseness.~--The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.--_George Eliot._

~Philosophy.~--Philosophy is the art of living.--_Plutarch._

Philosophy consists not in airy schemes, or idle speculations; the rule and conduct of all social life is her great province.--_Thomson._

The philosopher knows the universe and knows not himself.--_Fontaine._

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.--_Lamartine._

It is a maxim received among philosophers themselves from the days of Aristotle down to those of Sir William Hamilton, that philosophy ceases where truth is acknowledged.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Physiognomy.~--It is a point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.--_Bacon._

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it; 'tis the short-hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.--_Jeremy Collier._

The distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age; but the peculiar physiognomy of the