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

one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.--_Zimmermann._

The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.--_Madame Roland._

The more I see of men the better I think of animals.--_Tauler._

~Soldier.~--A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.--_Shakespeare._

Policy goes beyond strength, and contrivance before action; hence it is that direction is left to the commander, execution to the soldier, who is not to ask Why? but to do what he is commanded.--_Xenophon._

Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.--_Schiller._

Soldiers looked at as they ought to be: they are to the world as poppies to corn fields.--_Douglas Jerrold._

~Solitude.~--Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.--_Johnson._

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.--_Addison._

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.--_Gibbon._

Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.--_Byron._

Through the wide world he only is alone who lives not for another.--_Rogers._

Solitude is the worst of all companions when we seek comfort and oblivion.--_Mery._

~Sophistry.~--The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.--_Coleridge._

There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.--_Sir W. Raleigh._

~Sorrow.~--Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.--_Shelley._

If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e'er I did commit.--_Shakespeare._

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.--_Gray._

The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.--_Seneca._

Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.--_Keats._

The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.--_Sir P. Sidney._

Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.--_Tennyson._

Sorrow being the natural and direct offspring of sin, that which first brought sin into the world must, by necessary consequence, bring in sorrow too.--_South._

In extent sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is small. It drowns few.--_Charles Buxton._

It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.--_Chapin._

The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.--_Moore._

Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.--_Shakespeare._

Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.--_Mazzini._

Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.--_Schiller._

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.--_Jeremy Taylor._

~Soul.~--Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.--_Rousseau._

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.--_Hood._

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.--_George Eliot._

Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.--_Sir W. Raleigh._

~Specialty.~--No one can exist in society without some specialty. Eighty years ago it was only necessary to be well dressed and amiable; to-day a man of this kind would be too much like the garcons at the cafes.--_Taine._

~Speech.~--Sheridan once said of some speech, in his acute, sarcastic way, that "it contained a great deal both of what was new and what was true: but that unfortunately what was new was not true, and what was true was not new."--_Hazlitt._

God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.--_Heinrich Heine._

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language and has a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth: so people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.--_Dean Swift._

Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.--_Plutarch._

Never is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come, long after, back to memory, like the murmurs of a distant hymn.--_Henry Giles._

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless--nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.--_George Eliot._

~Sport.~--Dwell not too long upon sports; for as they refresh a man that is weary, so they weary a man that is refreshed.--_Fuller._

~Spring.~--Stately Spring! whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening.--_Richter._

Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace.--_Thomson._

The spring, the summer, the chiding autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries.--_Shakespeare._

Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire, hoar Winter's blooming child, delightful Spring.--_Mrs. Barbauld._

Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth, by the winds which tell of the violet's birth.--_Mrs. Hemans._

~Stars.~--These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.--_Emerson._

I am as constant as the northern star; of whose true, fixed, and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.--_Shakespeare._

The stars are so far,--far away!--_L. E. Landon._

Day hath put on his jacket, and around his burning bosom buttoned it with stars.--_Holmes._

The evening star, love's harbinger, appeared.--_Milton._

~Statesman.~--The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.--_Burke._

The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.--_J. Stuart Mill._

~Storms.~--When splitting winds make flexible the knees of knotted oaks.--_Shakespeare._

~Strength.~--Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.--_Shakespeare._

~Study.~--Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.--_Bacon._

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.--_Bolingbroke._

There is no one study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it.--_Pope._

They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material: a man must build his house for himself.--_George MacDonald._

The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Style.~--The style is the man.--_Buffon._

As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.--_Ben Jonson._

Not poetry, but prose run mad.--_Pope._

There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober natural expressions.--_South._

In the present day our literary masonry is well done, but our architecture is poor.--_Joubert._

Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lense effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.--_Colton._

A temperate style is alone classical.--_Joubert._

Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning.--_Macaulay._

Style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.--_Bancroft._

The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.--_Joubert._

~Subordination.~--The usual way that men adopt to appease the wrath of those whom they have offended, when they are at their mercy, is humble submission; whereas a bold front, a firm and resolute bearing,--means the very opposite,--have been at times equally successful.--_Montaigne._

Reverences stand in awe of yourself.--_Sydney Smith._

He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.--_Milton._

~Success.~--It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.--_Samuel Smiles._

From mere success