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

from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.--_Macaulay._

Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.--_Burke._

God never had a house of prayer but Satan had a chapel there.--_De Foe._

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.--_Thoreau._

~Circumstances.~--Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.--_Samuel Lover._

What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the impossible.--_Balzac._

~Civilization.~--Mankind's struggle upwards, in which millions are trampled to death, that thousands may mount on their bodies.--_Mrs. Balfour._

The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes. First men were in chains which went back to an iron hand. Then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron and ruling by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.--_Wendell Phillips._

Nations, like individuals, live and die; but civilization cannot die.--_Mazzini._

~Clergymen.~--The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.--_Johnson._

Clergymen consider this world only as a diligence in which they can travel to another.--_Napoleon._

The clergy are as like as peas.--_Emerson._

~Commander.~--The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature like an inheritance; it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage.--_Voltaire._

The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of the world.--_Antoine Lemierre._

He who rules must humor full as much as he commands.--_George Eliot._

~Commerce.~--She may well be termed the younger sister, for, in all emergencies, she looks to agriculture both for defense and for supply.--_Colton._

Commerce defies every wind, outrides every tempest, and invades every zone.--_Bancroft._

~Common Sense.~--If common sense has not the brilliancy of the sun it has the fixity of the stars.--_Fernan Caballero._

~Communists.~--One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.--_Ebenezer Elliott._

Your leaders wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves. They would all have some people under them; why not then have some people above them.--_Johnson._

Communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are hunger, envy, death.--_Heinrich Heine._

~Comparison.~--All comparisons are odious.--_Cervantes._

If we rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison.--_Locke._

~Compassion.~--The dew of compassion is a tear.--_Byron._

~Compensation.~--Cloud and rainbow appear together. There is wisdom in the saying of Feltham, that the whole creation is kept in order by discord, and that vicissitude maintains the world. Many evils bring many blessings. Manna drops in the wilderness--corn grows in Canaan.--_Willmott._

It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.--_Bovee._

~Complaining.~--We do not wisely when we vent complaint and censure. Human nature is more sensible of smart in suffering than of pleasure in rejoicing, and the present endurances easily take up our thoughts. We cry out for a little pain, when we do but smile for a great deal of contentment.--_Feltham._

Our condition never satisfies us; the present is always the worst. Though Jupiter should grant his request to each, we should continue to importune him.--_Fontaine._

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

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.--_Bible._

Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.--_Addison._

Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything.--_X. Doudan._

Apes look down on men as degenerate specimens of their own race, just as Hollanders regard the German language as a corruption of the Dutch.--_Heinrich Heine._

If its colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man's great idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is forty.--_Charles Buxton._

One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.--_George Eliot._

The pious vanity of man makes him adore his own qualities under the pretense of worshiping those of God.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Confidence.~--Confidence imparts a wondrous inspiration to its possessor. It bears him on in security, either to meet no danger, or to find matter of glorious trial.--_Milton._

Society is built upon trust, and trust upon confidence of one another's integrity.--_South._

~Conscience.~--Conscience is not law; no, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine.--_Sterne._

There are moments when the pale and modest star, kindled by God in simple hearts, which men call conscience, illumines our path with truer light than the flaming comet of genius on its magnificent course.--_Mazzini._

No thralls like them that inward bondage have.--_Sir P. Sidney._

Some people have no perspective in their conscience. Their moral convictions are the same on all subjects. They are like a reader who speaks every word with equal emphasis.--_Beecher._

Conscience enables us not merely to learn the right by experiment and induction, but intuitively and in advance of experiment; so, in addition to the experimental way whereby we learn justice from the facts of human history, we have a transcendental way, and learn it from the facts of human nature, and from immediate consciousness.--_Theodore Parker._

A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal; and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark.--_Lytton._

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.--_Goldsmith._

To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism: had we never sinned we should have had no conscience.--_Carlyle._

The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own conscience.--_Beecher._

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.--_J. Petit Senn._

It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel if a single stitch drops; one single sin indulged in makes a hole you could put your head through.--_Charles Buxton._

A still small voice.--_Bible._

~Constancy.~--A good man it is not mine to see; could I see a man possessed of constancy, that would satisfy me.--_Confucius._

Constancy is the chimera of love.--_Vauvenargues._

Constancy is the complement of all the other human virtues.--_Mazzini._

~Contempt.~--No sacred fane requires us to submit to contempt.--_Goethe._

There is not in human nature a more odious disposition than a proneness to contempt, which is a mixture of pride and ill-nature. Nor is there any which more certainly denotes a bad mind; for in a good and benign temper there can be no room for this sensation.--_Fielding._

~Contentment.~--That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy. Happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. He who wants little always has enough.--_Zimmermann._

It is both the curse and blessing of our American life that we are never quite content. We all expect to go somewhere before we die, and have a better time when we get there than we can have at home. The bane of our life is discontent. We say we will work so long, and then we will enjoy ourselves. But we find it just as Thackeray has expressed it. "When I was a boy," he said, "I wanted some taffy--it was a shilling--I hadn't one. When I was a man, I had a shilling, but I didn't want any taffy."--_Robert Collyer._

Submission is the only reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes.--_Sir W. Temple._

Where God hath put exquisite tinge upon the shell washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of bloom in a child's cheek, let us leave it to the owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the fault-finder to complain.--_De Witt Talmage._

~Contrast.~--The lustre of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades. The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.--_Johnson._

~Controversy.~--He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.--_Burke._

What Tully says of war may be applied to disputing,--it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,--their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.--_Pope._

I am yet apt to think that men find their simple ideas agree, though in discourse they confound one another with different names.--_Locke._

A man takes contradiction much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well-founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in the violent down-pour of rain.--_Richter._

~Conversation.~--They who have the true taste of conversation enjoy themselves in a communication of each other's excellences, and not in a triumph over their imperfections.--_Addison._

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.--_Montaigne._

Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.--_Shakespeare._

No one will ever shine in conversation who thinks of saying fine things; to please one must say many things indifferent, and many very bad.--_Francis Lockier._

Conversation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.--_Franklin._

~Coquetry.~--The most effective coquetry is innocence.--_Lamartine._

God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.--_Victor Hugo._

Affecting to seem unaffected.--_Congreve._

Though 'tis pleasant weaving nets, 'tis wiser to make cages.--_Moore._

Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!--_Shakespeare._

New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.--_Dryden._

~Courage.~--God holds with the strong.--_Mazzini._

Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.--_Colton._

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes the man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.--_Addison._

Courage from hearts, and not from numbers, grows.--_Dryden._

As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with _the two o'clock in the morning courage_. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision.--_Napoleon._

Courage our greatest failings does supply.--_Waller._

To bear is