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

God hath made in Scripture, would stand out against any evidence whatever; even that of a messenger sent express from the other world.--_Atterbury._

But what is meant, after all, by _uneducated_, in a time when books have come into the world--come to be household furniture in every habitation of the civilized world? In the poorest cottage are books--is one book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him.--_Carlyle._

A stream where alike the elephant may swim and the lamb may wade.--_Gregory the Great._

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high, and contained in the sacred writings.--_Herschel._

I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.--_Landor._

~Bigotry.~--A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power.--_Boileau._

Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenhoeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.--_Colton._

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side.--_Addison._

The worst of mad men is a saint run mad.--_Pope._

~Biography.~--As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.--_Plutarch._

Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels--teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action for their own and the world's good.--_Samuel Smiles._

It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people, who have lived with a man, know what to remark about him.--_Johnson._

History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.--_Johnson._

Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skillful hand to construct the skeleton.--_Willmott._

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.--_Plutarch._

~Birth.~--Noble in appearance, but this is mere outside; many noble born are base.--_Euripides._

~Blessings.~--The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.--_Charles Lamb._

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.--_St. Augustine._

We mistake the gratuitous blessings of Heaven for the fruits of our own industry.--_L'Estrange._

Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just.--_Plato._

How blessings brighten as they take their flight!--_Young._

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many: not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.--_Charles Dickens._

~Blush.~--The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame.--_Mrs. Balfour._

I have mark'd a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face; a thousand innocent shames, in angel whiteness, bear away those blushes.--_Shakespeare._

The glow of the angel in woman.--_Mrs. Balfour._

Such blushes as adorn the ruddy welkin or the purple morn.--_Ovid._

Luminous escapes of thought.--_Moore._

~Blustering.~--Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field--that, of course, they are many in number,--or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.--_Burke._

There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than a way of braying.--_L'Estrange._

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.--_George Eliot._

~Boasting.~--Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves with less noise.--_W. Secker._

With all his tumid boasts, he's like the sword-fish, who only wears his weapon in his mouth.--_Madden._

Every braggart shall be found an ass.--_Shakespeare._

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.--_Charles Buxton._

~Boldness.~--Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall.--_Smollett._

Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more.--_Lemesles._

~Bondage.~--The iron chain and the silken cord, both equally are bonds.--_Schiller._

~Books.~--If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!--_Thackeray._

When a new book comes out I read an old one.--_Rogers._

Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.--_Paxton Hood._

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.--_Thoreau._

A book _is_ good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble,--it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit.--_Beecher._

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.--_Fenelon._

We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.--_Plutarch._

To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor.--_Pope._

The medicine of the mind.--_Diodorus._

Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof.--_Channing._

Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs.--_George Eliot._

~Bores.~--I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer's noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music.--_Lamb._

These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men.--_Dryden._

If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of.--_Cowley._

The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril!--_Madame Swetchine._

~Borrowing.~--You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world's goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are.--_Heinrich Heine._

According to the security you offer to her, Fortune makes her loans easy or ruinous.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Bravery.~--True bravery is shown by performing without witnesses what one might be capable of doing before all the world.--_Rochefoucauld._

'Tis late before the brave despair.--_Thompson._

The bravest men are subject most to chance.--_Dryden._

The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes.--_Byron._

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.--_George Eliot._

~Brevity.~--To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.--_Charles Buxton._

Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?--_Johnson._

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.--_Feltham._

I saw one excellency was within my reach--it was brevity, and I determined to obtain it.--_Jay._

Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.--_Southey._

Concentration alone conquers.--_Charles Buxton._

The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.--_Alfred Bougeart._

Oratory, like the Drama, abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The fewer words the better prayer.--_Luther._

~Business.~--Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it.--_Tacitus._


C.

~Calumny.~--Neglected calumny soon expires; show that you are hurt, and you give it the appearance of truth.--_Tacitus._

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains, and traverses deserts with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and, like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.--_Colton._

~Cant.~--The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.--_Swift._

There is such a thing as a peculiar word or phrase cleaving, as it were, to the memory of the writer or speaker, and presenting itself to his utterance at every turn. When we observe this, we call it a cant word or a cant phrase.--_Paley._

~Caution.~--Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.--_Burke._

~Censure.~--Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves.--_Juvenal._

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.--_Hazlitt._

Censure is like the lightning which strikes the highest mountains.--_Balthasar Gracian._

~Chance.~--There must be chance in the midst of design; by which we mean that events which are not designed necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed.--_Paley._

Chance generally favors the prudent.--_Joubert._

It is strictly and philosophically true in nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause.--_Adam Clarke._

What can be more foolish than to think that all