Book of Wise Sayings - W. A. Clouston (smallest ebook reader TXT) 📗
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Hitopadesa.
The good to others kindness show,
And from them no return exact;
The best and greatest men, they know,
Thus ever nobly love to act.*
Mahābhārata.
* Cf. Luke, VI, 34, 35.
Trees loaded with fruit are bent down; the clouds when charged with fresh rain hang down near the earth: even so good men are not uplifted through prosperity. Such is the natural character of the liberal.
Bhartrihari.
The man who neither gives in charity nor enjoys his wealth, which every day increases, breathes, indeed, like the bellows of a smith, but cannot be said to live.
Hitopadesa.
That energy which veils itself in mildness is most effective of its object.
Māgha.
Our writings are like so many dishes, our readers, our guests, our books, like beauty—that which one admires another rejects; so we are approved as men’s fancies are inclined.... As apothecaries, we make new mixtures every day, pour out of one vessel into another; and as those old Romans robbed all cities of the world to set out their bad-cited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men’s wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens, to set out our own sterile plots. We weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or, if it be a new invention, ’tis but some bauble or toy, which idle fellows write, for as idle fellows to read.*
Burton.
* Ferriar has pointed out, in his Illustrations of Sterne, how these passages from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy have been boldly plagiarised in the introduction to the fragment on Whiskers in Tristram Shandy: “Shall we for ever make new books as apothecaries make new mixtures, by only pouring out of one vessel into another? Are we for ever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope?” And Dr. Johnson, who was a great admirer of Burton, adopts the illustration of the plundering Romans in his Rambler, No. 143.
It is our follies that make our lives uncomfortable. Our errors of opinion, our cowardly fear of the world’s worthless censure, and our eagerness after unnecessary gold have hampered the way of virtue, and made it far more difficult than, in itself, it is.
Feltham.
There is not half so much danger in the desperate sword of a known foe as in the smooth insinuations of a pretended friend.
R. Chamberlain.
Nothing is so oppressive as a secret; it is difficult for ladies to keep it long, and I know even in this matter a good number of men who are women.
La Fontaine.
All kinds of beauty do not inspire love: there is a kind of it which pleases only the sight, but does not captivate the affections.
Cervantes.
Contentment consisteth not in heaping more fuel, but in taking away some fire.
Fuller.
It is difficult to personate and act a part long, for where truth is not at the bottom Nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other.
Tillotson.
The truest characters of ignorance
Are vanity, pride, and arrogance;
As blind men use to bear their noses higher
Than those that have their eyes and sight entire.
Butler.
It is better to be well deserving without praise than to live by the air of undeserved commendation.
R. Chamberlain.
He travels safe and not unpleasantly who is guarded by poverty and guided by love.
Sir P. Sidney.
Never put thyself in the way of temptation: even David could not resist it.
Talmud.
Pride is a vice which pride itself inclines every man to find in others and overlook in himself.
Johnson.
By six qualities may a fool be known: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without motive; inquiry, without an object; trust in a stranger; and incapacity to discriminate between friend and foe.
Arabic.
Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances, but by the character of their lives and conversations. ’Tis better that a man’s own works than another man’s words should praise him.
Sir R. L’Estrange.
To exert his power in doing good is man’s most glorious task.
Sophocles.
Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are prepared to use it; when they do not require it they allow it to remain unbent, for otherwise it would be unserviceable when the time for using it arrived. So it is with man. If he were to devote himself unceasingly to a dull round of business, without breaking the monotony by cheerful amusements, he would fall imperceptibly into idiotcy, or be struck with paralysis.
Herodotus.
Blinded by self-conceit and knowing nothing,
Like elephant infatuate with passion,
I thought within myself, I all things knew;
But when by slow degrees I somewhat learnt
By aid of wise preceptors, my conceit,
Like some disease, passed off; and now I live
In the plain sense of what a fool I am.
Bhartrihari.
Time is the most important thing in human life, for what is pleasure after the departure of time? and the most consolatory, since pain, when pain has passed, is nothing. Time is the wheel-track in which we roll on towards eternity, conducting us to the Incomprehensible. In its progress there is a ripening power, and it ripens us the more, and the more powerfully, when we duly estimate it. Listen to its voice, do not waste it, but regard it as the highest finite good, in which all finite things are resolved.
Von Humboldt.
All that we are is made up of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with a pure thought, happiness will follow him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Dhammapada.
Depend not on another, rather lean
Upon thyself; trust to thine own exertions:
Subjection to another’s will gives pain;
True happiness consists in self-reliance.
Manu.
If the friendship of the good be interrupted, their minds admit of no long change; as when the stalks of a lotus are broken the filaments within them are more visibly cemented.
Hitopadesa.
Anger that has no limit causes terror, and unseasonable kindness does away with respect. Be not so severe as to cause disgust, nor so lenient as to make people presume.
Sa’dī.
Be patient, if thou wouldst thy ends accomplish; for like patience is there no appliance effective of success, producing certainly abundant fruit of actions, never damped by failure, conquering all impediments.
Bhāravi.
As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion breaks through an unreflecting mind.
Dhammapada.
Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.
Goethe.
Poverty, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which if they do mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe for him, and force on him, a sort of course and goal; a safe and beaten, though a circuitous, course. A great part of his guidance is secure against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. The rich, again, has his whole life to guide, without goal or barrier, save of his own choosing, and, tempted, is too likely to guide it ill.
Carlyle.
By Fate full many a heart has been undone,
And many a sprightly rose made woe-begone;
Plume thee not on thy lusty youth and strength:
Full many a bud is blasted ere its bloom.
Omar Khayyām.
The best thing is to be respected, the next, is to be loved; it is bad to be hated, but still worse to be despised.
Chinese.
To be envied is a nobler fate than to be pitied.
Pindar.
He only does not live in vain
Who all the means within his reach
Employs—his wealth, his thought, his speech—
T’advance the weal of other men.
Sanskrit.
If you injure a harmless person, the evil will fall back upon you, like light dust thrown up against the wind.
Buddhist.
In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause.
Longfellow.
Man is an intellectual animal, therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two without the possibility of its ever being otherwise. A mere physical being or a pure spirit can alone be satisfied with itself.
Hazlitt.
The pure in heart, who fear to sin,
The good, kindly in word and deed—
These are the beings in the world
Whose nature should be called divine.
Buddhist.
If thou desirest that the pure in heart should praise thee, lay aside anger; be not a man of many words; and parade not thy virtues in the face of others.
Firdausī.
A wise man takes a step at a time; he establishes one foot before he takes up the other: an old place should not be forsaken recklessly.
Sanskrit.
The fish dwell in the depths of the waters, and the eagles in the sides of heaven; the one, though high, may be reached with the arrow, and the other, though deep, with the hook; but the heart of man at a foot’s distance cannot be known.*
Burmese.
* Cf. Proverbs, XXV, 3.
The life of man is the incessant walk of nature, wherein every moment is a step towards death. Even our growing to perfection is a progress to decay. Every thought we have is a sand running out of the glass of life.
Feltham.
I have observed that as long as a man lives and exerts himself he can always find food and raiment, though, it may be, not of the choicest description.
Goethe.
There are no riches like the sweetness of content, nor poverty comparable to the want of patience.
R. Chamberlain.
’Tis not for gain, for fame, from fear
That righteous men injustice shun,
And virtuous men hold virtue dear:
An inward voice they seem to hear,
Which tells them duty must be done.
Mahābhārata.
As far and wide the vernal breeze
Sweet odours waft from blooming trees,
So, too, the grateful savour spreads
To distant lands of virtuous deeds.
Sanskrit.
In this world, however little happiness may have been our portion, yet have we no desire to die. Whether he can speak of life as cheerful and delicate, or as full of pain, anxiety, and sorrow, never yet have I seen one who wished
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