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

the sunbeam of the heart.--_Halleck._

Sensibility is the power of woman.--_Lavater._

Feeling loves a subdued light.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Sensitiveness.~--Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.--_George Eliot._

That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.--_Burke._

~Sentiment.~--Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?--_Emerson._

~Separation.~--Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Shakespeare.~--There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.--_Heinrich Heine._

Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears.--_T. B. Shaw._

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.--_Goethe._

In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.--_Coleridge._

No man is too busy to read Shakespeare.--_Charles Buxton._

Shakespeare's personages live and move as if they had just come from the hand of God, with a life that, though manifold, is one, and, though complex, is harmonious.--_Mazzini._

Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child.--_Milton._

And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.--_Campbell._

Shakespeare is one of the best means of culture the world possesses. Whoever is at home in his pages is at home everywhere.--_H. N. Hudson._

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.--_Emerson._

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.--_O. W. Holmes._

Whatever other learning he wanted he was master of two books unknown to many profound readers, though books which the last conflagration can alone destroy. I mean the book of Nature and of Man.--_Young._

If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.--_Macaulay._

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.--_Johnson._

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.--_Keats._

Shame.--Nature's hasty conscience.--_Maria Edgeworth._

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.--_Goldsmith._

~Ship.~--A prison with the chance of being drowned.--_Johnson._

Cradle of the rude imperious surge.--_Shakespeare._

~Silence.~--The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Give thy thoughts no tongue.--_Shakespeare._

True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak.--_Ben Jonson._

I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.--_Zeno._

Silence in times of suffering is the best.--_Dryden._

Silence! coeval with eternity.--_Pope._

Silence is the sanctuary of prudence.--_Balthasar Gracian._

The unspoken word never does harm.--_Kossuth._

Silence is the understanding of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.--_Bonnard._

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.--_George Eliot._

Silence gives consent.--_Goldsmith._

Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.--_Zimmerman._

~Simplicity.~--Simplicity is doubtless a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.--_Madame de Girardin._

Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.--_P. J. Bailey._

The world could not exist if it were not simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.--_Goethe._

The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model, without miracle, without extravagance.--_Montaigne._

There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.--_Pope._

~Sin.~--Original sin is in us like the beard: we are shaved to-day, and look clean, and have a smooth chin; to-morrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. In like manner original sin cannot be extirpated from us; it springs up in us as long as we exist; Nevertheless, we are bound to resist it to our utmost strength, and to cut it down unceasingly.--_Luther._

Sin, in fancy, mothers many an ugly fact.--_Theodore Parker._

There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and sure to one and all.--_Hosea Ballou._

Every man has his devilish minutes.--_Lavater._

Death from sin no power can separate.--_Milton._

Our sins, like to our shadows, when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared. Towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!--_Sir J. Suckling._

'Tis the will that makes the action good or ill.--_Herrick._

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.--_Sir Walter Scott._

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.--_Shakespeare._

Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.--_Plato._

Sin and her shadow death.--_Milton._

If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do it; and if ye do evil, against yourselves will ye do it.--_Koran._

It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.--_Boileau._

There are sins of omission as well as those of commission.--_Madame Deluzy._

~Sincerity.~--Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.--_Tillotson._

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.--_Coleridge._

~Skepticism.~--Skepticism is slow suicide.--_Emerson._

~Skill.~--Nobody, however able, can gain the very highest success, except in one line. He may rise above others, but he will fall below himself.--_Charles Buxton._

Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.--_Walter Scott._

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.--_Gibbon._

~Slander.~--Done to death by slanderous tongues.--_Shakespeare._

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.--_Douglas Jerrold._

Slander lives upon succession, forever housed where it gets possession.--_Shakespeare._

When the absent are spoken of, some will speak gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and some always speak dirt, for they have a natural attraction towards what is evil, and think it shows penetration in them. As a cat watching for mice does not look up though an elephant goes by, so are they so busy mousing for defects, that they let great excellences pass them unnoticed. I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you are such an one.--_Beecher._

If parliament were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as sporting on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame as well as game, there are many would thank them for the bill.--_Sheridan._

~Sleep.~--When one asked Alexander how he could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of danger, he told them that _Parmenio_ watched. Oh, how securely may they sleep over whom He watches that never slumbers nor sleeps! "I will," said David, "lay me down and sleep, for thou, Lord, makest me to dwell in safety."--_Venning._

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.--_Shakespeare._

Sleep is no servant of the will; it has caprices of its own; when courted most, it lingers still; when most pursued, 'tis swiftly gone.--_Bowring._

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.--_Bible._

Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.--_Alcott._

Night's sepulchre.--_Byron._

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.--_Donne._

Sleep, to the homeless thou art home; the friendless find in thee a friend.--_Ebenezer Elliott._

The soul shares not the body's rest.--_Maturin._

Our foster nurse of nature is repose.--_Shakespeare._

~Sloth.~--Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.--_Colton._

~Smile.~--A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy--the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby.--_Haliburton._

Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.--_Winthrop._

Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.--_Shakespeare._

The smile that was childlike and bland.--_Bret Harte._

A soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.--_Victor Hugo._

~Sneer.~--The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.--_Hazlitt._

~Society.~--If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.--_Lavater._

Formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.--_Byron._

Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.--_Emerson._

We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.--_Chamfort._

Society is the union of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and yet man may remain.--_Montesquieu._

There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.--_Taine._

Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.--_Tuckerman._

Intercourse is the soul of progress.--_Charles Buxton._

One ought to love society if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If