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

itself in the most boundless freedoms.--_Addison._

~Hyperbole.~--Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied with hyperbole.--_Bruyere._

Let us have done with reproaching; for we may throw out so many reproachful words on one another that a ship of a hundred oars would not be able to carry the load.--_Homer._

~Hypocrisy.~--Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to him the outside, and reserving the inward for his enemy.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Hypocrisy has become a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.--_Moliere._

Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal.--_Swift._

Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy.--_Mme. de Maintenon._

As a man loves gold, in that proportion he hates to be imposed upon by counterfeits; and in proportion as a man has regard for that which is above price and better than gold, he abhors that hypocrisy which is but its counterfeit.--_Cecil._

Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.--_Milton._

Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man's hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still: that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.--_Cowper._

I hate hypocrites, who put on their virtues with their white gloves.--_Alfred de Musset._

Such a man will omit neither family worship, nor a sneer at his neighbor. He will neither milk his cows on the first day of the week without a Sabbath mask on his face, nor remove it while he waters the milk for his customers.--_George Mac Donald._

The fatal fact in the case of a hypocrite is that he is a hypocrite.--_Chapin._

'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to show himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie.--_Montaigne._


I.

~Ideas.~--After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.--_George Eliot._

Our ideas are transformed sensations.--_Condillac._

In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.--_Heinrich Heine._

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.--_Holmes._

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.--_Taine._

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.--_X. Doudan._

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.--_Joubert._

Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.--_Voltaire._

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Idleness.~--If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.--_Sydney Smith._

Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.--_Spurgeon._

In idleness there is perpetual despair.--_Carlyle._

Doing nothing with a deal of skill.--_Cowper._

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.--_Colton._

The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.--_Dickens._

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.--_Chesterfield._

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Let but the hours of idleness cease, and the bow of Cupid will become broken and his torch extinguished.--_Ovid._

~Ignorance.~--Have the _courage_ to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.--_Sydney Smith._

There is no calamity like ignorance.--_Richter._

'Tis sad work to be at that pass, that the best trial of truth must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceeds that of the wise. As if anything were so common as ignorance!--_Montaigne._

Ignorance, which in behavior mitigates a fault, is, in literature, a capital offense.--_Joubert._

There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall _by_ the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or _with_ them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.--_Coleridge._

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance.--_Alcott._

The true instrument of man's degradation is his ignorance.--_Lady Morgan._

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.--_George Eliot._

The ignorant hath an eagle's wings and an owl's eyes.--_George Herbert._

Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction.--_Johnson._

~Illusion.~--In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.--_Madame Swetchine._

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.--_Voltaire._

~Imagination.~--We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.--_George Eliot._

A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.--_Spurgeon._

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.--_Joubert._

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.--_Johnson._

~Imitation.~--Imitators are a servile race.--_Fontaine._

Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves.--_Dr. Vinet._

"Name to me an animal, though never so skillful, that I cannot imitate!" So bragged the ape to the fox. But the fox replied, "And do thou name to me an animal so humble as to think of imitating thee."--_Lessing._

~Immortality.~--When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising; I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal.--_Cicero._

Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and consequently imperishable.--_Aristotle._

The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod.--_Milton._

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.--_Socrates._

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.--_Marcus Antoninus._

The seed dies into a new life, and so does man.--_George MacDonald._

~Impatience.~--Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.--_Jeremy Taylor._

~Impossibility.~--One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.--_Democritus._

~Improvement.~--Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing. Advance with it.--_Mazzini._

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.--_Goldsmith._

~Improvidence.~--How full or how empty our lives, depends, we say, on Providence. Suppose we say, more or less on improvidence.--_Bovee._

~Income.~--Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.--_Colton._

~Inconsistency.~--Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none: their vows and promises are no more than words of course.--_L'Estrange._

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.--_George Eliot._

~Inconstancy.~--The catching court disease.--_Otway._

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.--_Addison._

~Indifference.~--Nothing for preserving the body like having no heart.--_J. Petit Senn._

Indifference is the invincible giant of the world.--_Ouida._

~Indigestion.~--Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food.--_Sydney Smith._

~Individuality.~--There are men of convictions whose very faces will light up an era, and there are believing women in whose eyes you may almost read the whole plan of salvation.--_T. Fields._

Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.--_Richter._

The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.--_Mazzini._

~Indolence.~--I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.--_Chesterfield._

Lives spent in indolence, and therefore sad.--_Cowper._

Days of respite are golden days.--_South._

So long as he must fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth and slumber.--_Charles Buxton._

Nothing ages like laziness.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Indulgence.~--One wishes to be happy before becoming wise.--_Mme. Necker._

~Industry.~--Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.--_Addison._

Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest we must sow the seed.--_Bailey._

~Infidelity.~--There is but one thing without honor; smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,--insincerity, unbelief. He who believes no _thing_, who believes only the shows of things, is not in relation with nature and fact at all.--_Carlyle._

I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.--_Richter._

If on one side there are fair proofs, and no pretense of proof on the other, and that the difficulties are more pressing on that side which is destitute of proof, I desire to know whether this be not upon the matter as satisfactory to a wise man as