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

time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.--_Charles Buxton._

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.--_Hesiod._

There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Prodigality.~--This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.--_Dr. South._

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.--_Goldsmith._

The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.--_Socrates._

~Progress.~--All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.--_Gibbon._

What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.--_X. Doudan._

Revolutions never go backwards.--_Emerson._

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.--_Bartol._

Progress is lame.--_St. Bueve._

We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.--_George Eliot._

The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.--_G. H. Lewes._

Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.--_Mazzini._

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.--_Heinrich Heine._

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.--_Mazzini._

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.--_Longfellow._

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.--_Emerson._

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.--_Mazzini._

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Promise.~--Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and gratitude a thread.--_J. Petit Senn._

~Proof.~--In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses.--_Cicero._

Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon.--_Shakespeare._

~Prosperity.~--Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.--_Vauvenargues._

That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.--_Johnson._

Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.--_AEschylus._

Prosperity lets go the bridle.--_George Herbert._

~Proverbs.~--Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.--_Bishop Whately._

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.--_Motherwell._

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.--_Lavater._

~Prudence.~--There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure.--_Rochefoucauld._

Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters.--_Whitfield._

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.--_Aristophanes._

~Punctuality.~--The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.--_Brillat Savarin._

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Punishment.~--One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.--_Juvenal._

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.--_Plato._

Punishment is lame, but it comes.--_George Herbert._

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.--_Locke._

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?--_George Eliot._

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.--_Goldsmith._

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.--_Cato._

The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!--_Hawthorne._

~Puns.~--I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they _ought_ to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.--_Sydney Smith._

Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense.--_Addison._

~Purposes.~--Man proposes, but God disposes.--_Thomas a Kempis._

A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.--_Bible._

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.--_Herodotus._

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.--_Smiles._

~Pursuit.~--The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.--_Longfellow._

The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.--_Lady Montagu._


Q.

~Quacks.~--Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax--the folly and ignorance of mankind.--_Colton._

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.--_Thoreau._

~Qualities.~--Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.--_Goethe._

~Quarrels.~--Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.--_George Eliot._

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.--_Mme. Necker._

~Questions.~--There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?--_Johnson._

~Quotation.~--In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.--_Selden._

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.--_Jeremy Taylor._

If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.--_Burke._

It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.--_Coleridge._

Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places.--_Hannah More._

I take memorandums of the schools.--_Swift._

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.--_Mazzini._

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.--_Trublet._

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.--_Coleridge._

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.--_J. Petit Senn._

As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.--_De Quincey._


R.

~Rain.~--Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.--_Roscommon._

The kind refresher of the summer heats.--_Thomson._

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.--_Waller._

The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.--_Dryden._

~Rainbow.~--That smiling daughter of the storm.--_Colton._

Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.--_J. C. Prince._

God's glowing covenant.--_Hosea Ballou._

~Rank.~--If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.--_Madame Swetchine._

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.--_Wycherley._

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.--_Southerne._

~Rashness.~--Rashness and haste make all things insecure.--_Denham._

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.--_Shakespeare._

~Reading.~--Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.--_Congreve._

Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.--_Milton._

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