Pearls of Thought - Maturin Murray Ballou (most interesting books to read TXT) 📗

to hide.--_George Sand._

~Gunpowder.~--If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.--_Gibbon._

A coarse-grained powder, used by cross-grained people, playing at cross-grained purposes.--_Marryatt._

Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first, and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the report is heard, so that it maketh a noise, not by way of warning, but of triumph.--_Fuller._


H.

~Habits.~--Habits are soon assumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.--_Cowper._

Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon.--_Cicero._

Unless the habit leads to happiness, the best habit is to contract none.--_Zimmerman._

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.--_George D. Boardman._

Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.--_Bacon._

That beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly.--_George Eliot._

Habits are the daughters of action, but they nurse their mothers, and give birth to daughters after her image, more lovely and prosperous.--_Jeremy Taylor._

~Hair.~--The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning.--_Luther._

Her head was bare, but for her native ornament of hair, which in a simple knot was tied above; sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!--_Dryden._

The robe which curious nature weaves to hang upon the head.--_Dekker._

Robed in the long night of her deep hair.--_Tennyson._

~Hand.~--Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time.--_Quintilian._

The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony, declined with Paganism; but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. At present it is only practiced as a mark of obedience from the subject to the sovereign, and by lovers, who are solicitous to preserve this ancient usage in its full power.--_Disraeli._

~Handsome.~--They are as heaven made them, handsome enough if they be good enough; for handsome is that handsome does.--_Goldsmith._

~Happiness.~--The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman; the foundation of political happiness is confidence in the integrity of man; the foundation of all happiness, temporal and eternal, is reliance on the goodness of God.--_Landor._

To remember happiness which cannot be restored is pain, but of a softened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions that we bitterly repent; still, in the most checkered life, I firmly think there are so many little rays of sunshine to look back upon that I do not believe any mortal would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters of Lethe if he had it in his power.--_Dickens._

That man is never happy for the present is so true that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.--_Johnson._

It is a lucky eel that escapes skinning. The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.--_George Eliot._

That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally _satisfied_, but not equally _happy_. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.--_Johnson._

Happiness doats on her work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities.--_Landor._

Sensations sweet, felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.--_Wordsworth._

Great happiness is the fire ordeal of mankind, great misfortune only the trial by water; for the former opens a large extent of futurity, whereas the latter circumscribes or closes it.--_Richter._

Prospective happiness is perhaps the only real happiness in the world.--_Alfred de Musset._

Nature and individuals are generally best when they are happiest, and deserve heaven most when they have learnt rightly to enjoy it. Tears of sorrow are only pearls of inferior value, but tears of joy are pearls or diamonds of the first water.--_Richter._

How many people I have seen who would have plucked cannon-balls out of the muzzles of guns with their bare hands, and yet had not courage enough to be happy.--_Theophile Gautier._

All mankind are happier for having been happy, so that, if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.--_Sydney Smith._

We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.--_Lamotte._

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to _fourteen_. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!--_The Caliph Abdalrahman._

If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), _my_ happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present composition.--_Gibbon._

For which we bear to live, or dare to die.--_Pope._

We buy wisdom with happiness, and who would purchase it at such a price? To be happy we must forget the past, and think not of the future; and who that has a soul or mind can do this? No one; and this proves that those who have either know no happiness on this earth. Memory precludes happiness, whatever Rogers may say or write to the contrary, for it borrows from the past to embitter the present, bringing back to us all the grief that has most wounded, or the happiness that has most charmed us.--_Byron._

The happiness you wot of is not a hundredth part of what you enjoy.--_Charles Buxton._

Every human soul has the germ of some flowers within; and they would open if they could only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there is.--_Mrs. L. M. Child._

Comparison, more than reality, makes men happy, and can make them wretched.--_Feltham._

Happiness and misery are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not.--_Locke._

There comes forever something between us and what we deem our happiness.--_Byron._

Philosophical happiness is to want little; civil or vulgar happiness is to want much, and to enjoy much.--_Burke._

How sad a sight is human happiness to those whose thoughts can pierce beyond an hour.--_Young._

Plenteous joys, wanton in fullness.--_Shakespeare._

Happiness is always the inaccessible castle which sinks in ruin when we set foot on it.--_Arsene Houssaye._

For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so; happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which separately and of themselves have little value, but which united with art form a graceful design.--_Mme. de Girardin._

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.--_George Eliot._

The way to bliss lies not on beds of down.--_Quarles._

The use we make of happiness gives us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.--_Rousseau._

Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.--_J. Petit Senn._

In regard to the affairs of mortals, there is nothing happy throughout.--_Euripides._

~Hardship.~--The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food,--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.--_George Eliot._

~Haste.~--Let your haste commend your duty.--_Shakespeare._

The more haste ever the worst speed.--_Churchill._

Hurry and cunning are the two apprentices of dispatch and skill; but neither of them ever learn their master's trade.--_Colton._

All haste implies weakness.--_George MacDonald._

~Hatred.~--We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.--_Colton._

Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.--_Beecher._

Love is rarely a hypocrite. But hate! how detect, and how guard against it. It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties whilst it favors its disguise; for civilization increases the number of contending interests, and refinement renders more susceptible to the least irritation the cuticle of self-love.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Hatred is like fire--it makes even light rubbish deadly.--_George Eliot._

~Health.~--Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished, that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.--_Thackeray._

Those hypochondriacs, who, like Herodius, give up their whole time and thoughts to the care of their health, sacrifice unto life every noble purpose of living; striving to support a frail and feverish being here, they neglect an hereafter; they continue to patch up and repair their mouldering tenement of clay, regardless of the immortal tenant that must survive it; agitated by greater fears than the Apostle, and supported by none of his hopes, they "die daily."--_Colton._

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures, of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.--_Johnson._

There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Heart.~--The heart is like the tree that gives balm for the wounds of man only when the iron has pierced it.--_Chauteaubriand._

The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.--_Calderon._

There are treasures laid up in the heart,--treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world.--_Buddhist Scriptures._

In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof!--_Byron._