Pearls of Thought

Ballou Maturin Murray

Pearls of Thought

Writers of an abler sort,

Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,

Give Truth a lustre, and make Wisdom smile.

Cowper.

General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room.

Locke.

Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private recordes, and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and the like, we doe save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

Bacon.

I would fain coin wisdom, – mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted.

Joubert.

PREFACE

A verse may find him whom a sermon flies.

George Herbert.

The volume herewith presented is the natural result of the compiler's habit of transferring and classifying significant passages from known authors. No special course of reading has been pursued, the thoughts being culled from foreign and native tongues – from the moss-grown tomes of ancient literature and the verdant fields of to-day. The terse periods of others, appropriately quoted, become in a degree our own; and a just estimation is very nearly allied to originality, or, as the author of Vanity Fair tells us, "Next to excellence is the appreciation of it." Without indorsing the idea of a modern authority that the multiplicity of facts and writings is becoming so great that every available book must soon be composed of extracts only, still it is believed that such a volume as "Pearls of Thought" will serve the interest of general literature, and especially stimulate the mind of the thoughtful reader to further research. The pleasant duty of the compiler has been to follow the expressive idea of Colton, and he has made the same use of books as a bee does of flowers, – she steals the sweets from them, but does not injure them.

To the observant reader many familiar quotations will naturally occur, the absence of which may seem a singular omission in such a connection and classification, but doubtless such excerpts will be found in the "Treasury of Thought," a much more extended work by the same author, to which this volume is properly a supplement. Of course care has been taken not to repeat any portion of the previous collection.

M. M. B.

PEARLS OF THOUGHT

A

Ability.– Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities. —Schopenhaufer.

Words must be fitted to a man's mouth, – 'twas well said of the fellow that was to make a speech for my Lord Mayor, when he desired to take measure of his lordship's mouth. —Selden.

Absence.– Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it. —Hannah More.

Absence from those we love is self from self! A deadly banishment. —Shakespeare.

Short retirement urges sweet return. —Milton.

Whatever is genuine in social relations endures despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact. —Tuckerman.

Frozen by distance. —Wordsworth.

Short absence quickens love, long absence kills it. —Mirabeau.

We often wish most for our friends when they are absent. Even in married life love is not diminished by distance. A man, like a burning-glass, should be placed at a certain distance from the object he wishes to dissolve, in order that the proper focus may be obtained. —Richter.

Abstinence.– Refrain to-night, and that shall lend a hand of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency. —Shakespeare.

Abuse.– Abuse is not so dangerous when there is no vehicle of wit or delicacy, no subtle conveyance. The difference between coarse and refined abuse is as the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow. —Johnson.

Accident.– What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident collects in one brief moment. —Schiller.

What men call accident is God's own part. —P. J. Bailey.

Acquirements.– Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks: he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other. —Metastasio.

Action.– Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument. If you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and in proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will have the less influence upon them. —Johnson.

Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not act. —Sophocles.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of an orator, what the second, and what the third? he answered, "Action." The same may I say. If any should ask me what is the first, the second, the third part of a Christian, I must answer, "Action." —T. Brooks.

Our best conjectures, as to the true spring of actions, are very uncertain; the actions themselves are all we must pretend to know from history. That Cæsar was murdered by twenty-four conspirators, I doubt not; but I very much doubt whether their love of liberty was the sole cause. —Chesterfield.

Action is generally defective, and proves an abortion without previous contemplation. Contemplation generates, action propagates. —Owen Feltham.

Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose law of improvement is not energy. —E. B. Hall.

Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious. —Colton.

Outward actions can never give a just estimate of us, since there are many perfections of a man which are not capable of appearing in actions. —Addison.

Mark this well, ye proud men of action! Ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought. —Heinrich Heine.

Actors.– Players, sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others? Yes, sir; as some dogs dance better than others. —Johnson.

Each under his borrowed guise the actor belongs to himself. He has put on a mask, beneath it his real face still exists; he has thrown himself into a foreign individuality, which in some sense forms a shelter to the integrity of his own character; he may indeed wear festive attire, but his mourning is beneath it; he may smile, divert, act, his soul is still his own; his inner life is undisturbed; no indiscreet question will lift the veil, no coarse hand will burst open the gates of the sanctuary. —Countess de Gasparin.

Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably! —Shakespeare.

An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor. For an actor to represent a Greek hero it is imperative he should have thoroughly studied those antique statues which have lasted to our day, and mastered the particular grace they exhibited in their postures, whether sitting, standing, or walking. Nor should he make attitude his only study. He should highly develop his mind by an assiduous study of the best writers, ancient and modern, which will enable him not only to understand his parts, but to communicate a nobler coloring to his manners and mien. —Goethe.

Admiration.– Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened. —Johnson.

Season your admiration for awhile. —Shakespeare.

I wonder whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful – who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life. —George Eliot.

Admiration is the base of ignorance. —Balthasar Gracian.

It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live, than to be loved by them. And this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love. —Arthur Helps.

Admiration is a forced tribute, and to extort it from mankind (envious and ignorant as they are) they must be taken unawares. —James Northcote.

Adversity.– If adversity hath killed his thousands, prosperity hath killed his ten thousands; therefore adversity is to be preferred. The one deceives, the other instructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity and so much commend it in their precepts. —Burton.

Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from our impatience. —Bishop Horne.

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain, – cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate. —Walter Scott.

Two powerful destroyers: Time and Adversity. —A. de Musset.

Our dependence upon God ought to be so entire and absolute that we should never think it necessary, in any kind of distress, to have recourse to human consolation. —Thomas à Kempis.

Adversity, like winter weather, is of use to kill those vermin which the summer of prosperity is apt to produce and nourish. —Arrowsmith.

Adversity, how blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of Guilt! —Blair.

Advice.– People are sooner reclaimed by the side wind of a surprise than by downright admonition. —L'Estrange.

Agreeable advice is seldom useful advice. —Massillon.

Affectation.– All affectation proceeds from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses. —Sydney Smith.

Affectation is certain deformity. —Blair.

Affection.– None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch, but love and envy. —Bacon.

None are so desolate but something dear, dearer than self, possesses or possess'd. —Byron.

Those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her own love. —George Eliot.

God give us leisure for these rights of love. —Shakespeare.

Afflictions.– Before an affliction is digested, consolation comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late; but there is a mark between these two, as fine, almost, as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at. —Sterne.

Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches are better for beating; grapes come not to the proof till they come to the press; spices smell best when bruised; young trees root the faster for shaking; gold looks brighter for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; the palm-tree proves the better for pressing; chamomile, the more you tread it, the more you spread it. Such is the condition of all God's children: they are then most triumphant when most tempted; most glorious when most afflicted. —Bogatzky.

That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation. For many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of a great calamity. —Jeremy Taylor.

Nothing so much increases one's reverence for others as a great sorrow to one's self. It teaches one the depths of human nature. In happiness we are shallow, and deem others so. —Charles Buxton.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites. —Bovée.

Afflictions sent by Providence melt the constancy of the noble-minded but confirm the obduracy of the vile. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and in the strong manifestations of divine power Pharoah found his punishment, but David his pardon. —Colton.

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure. —Tillotson.

To love all mankind, from the greatest to the lowest (or meanest), a cheerful state of being is required; but in order to see into mankind, into life, and, still more, into ourselves, suffering is requisite. —Richter.

Count up man's calamities and who would seem happy? But in truth, calamity leaves fully half of your life untouched. —Charles Buxton.

Age.– Wrinkles are the tomb of love. —Sarros in.

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree. —George Eliot.

Autumnal green. —Dryden.

Ye old men, brief is the space of life allotted to you; pass it as pleasantly as ye can, not grieving from morning till eve. Since time knows not how to preserve our hopes, but, attentive to its own concerns, flies away. —Euripides.

The Grecian ladies counted their age from their marriage, not their birth. —Homer.

The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in, so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater. —South.

Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they are strongest for things a long way off. —George Eliot.

Serene, and safe from passion's stormy rage, how calm they glide into the port of age! —Shenstone.

Providence gives us notice by sensible declensions, that we may disengage from the world by degrees. —Jeremy Collier.

Age oppresses by the same degrees that it instructs us, and permits not that our mortal members, which are frozen with our years, should retain the vigor of our youth. —Dryden.

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice, for age whitens only the hair. —J. Petit Senn.

Up to forty a woman has only forty springs in her heart. After that age she has only forty winters. —Arsène Houssaye.

I love everything that's old. Old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. —Goldsmith.

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own. —J. Petit Senn.

There are two things which grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to their beauty. —Chateaubriand.

Agitation.– Agitation is the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws. —Sir R. Peel.

Agitation is the method that plants the school by the side of the ballot-box. —Wendell Phillips.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains. —Wendell Phillips.

Agriculture.– Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures, since the productions of nature are the materials of art. —Gibbon.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation but the only riches she can call her own. —Johnson.

Let the farmer for evermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God. —Thomas Jefferson.

Allegory.– Allegories and spiritual significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. Allegories are fine ornaments, but not of proof. —Luther.

The allegory of a sophist is always screwed; it crouches and bows like a snake, which is never straight, whether she go, creep, or lie still; only when she is dead, she is straight enough. —Luther.

Ambition.– It was not till after the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi that the idea entered my mind that I might become a decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose for the first time the spark of great ambition. —Napoleon.

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune. —Burke.

If there is ever a time to be ambitious, it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is hard. Fight in darkness; fight when you are down; die hard, and you won't die at all. —Beecher.

By that sin angels fell. —Shakespeare.

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions. —Hume.

An ardent thirst of honor; a soul unsatisfied with all it has done, and an unextinguished desire of doing more. —Dryden.

Ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration. —George MacDonald.

Think not ambition wise, because 'tis brave. —Sir W. Davenant.

Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise. —Massinger.

America.– Child of the earth's old age. —L. E. Langdon.

The name – American, must always exalt the pride of patriotism. —Washington.

In America we see a country of which it has been truly said that in no other are there so few men of great learning and so few men of great ignorance. —Buckle.

America is as yet in the youth and gristle of her strength. —Burke.

If all Europe were to become a prison, America would still present a loop-hole of escape; and, God be praised! that loop-hole is larger than the dungeon itself. —Heinrich Heine.

Ere long, thine every stream shall find a tongue, land of the many waters. —Hoffman.

America is rising with a giant's strength. Its bones are yet but cartilages. —Fisher Ames.

Amusement.– Amusement is the waking sleep of labor. When it absorbs thought, patience, and strength that might have been seriously employed, it loses its distinctive character, and becomes the task-master of idleness. —Willmott.

Analogy.– Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvelously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth. —Colton.

Anarchy.– The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls. —Carlyle.

Ancestry.– We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the furthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain the fouler the stream: and that first ancestor who has soiled his fingers by labor is no better than a parvenu. —Froude.

Breed is stronger than pasture. —George Eliot.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. —Sallust.

Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur. —Colton.

Honorable descent is in all nations greatly esteemed; besides, it is to be expected that the children of men of worth will be like their fathers, for nobility is the virtue of a family. —Aristotle.

A long series of ancestors shows the native lustre with advantage; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine. —Dryden.

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. —Whately.

Ancients.– In tragedy and satire I maintain, against some critics, that this age and the last have excelled the ancients; and I would instance in Shakespeare of the former, in Dorset of the latter. —Dryden.

Though the knowledge they have left us be worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its treasures; they left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after-ages. —Locke.

Angels.– In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put in theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's. —George Eliot.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. —Milton.

Anger.– If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are. —Beecher.

Temperate anger well becomes the wise. —Philemon.

When anger rushes, unrestrained, to action, like a hot steed, it stumbles in its way. —Savage.

Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are bitterer than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim. —Charles Buxton.

Above all, gentlemen, no heat. —Talleyrand.

Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Keep cool and you command everybody. —St. Just.

I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; when I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart. —Luther.

When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Angling.– I give up fly-fishing; it is a light, volatile, dissipated pursuit. But ground-bait with a good steady float that never bobs without a bite is an occupation for a bishop, and in no way interferes with sermon-making. —Sydney Smith.

He that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. —Izaak Walton.

Idle time not idly spent. —Sir Henry Wotton.

To see the fish cut with her golden oars the silver stream and greedily devour the treacherous bait. —Shakespeare.

Anticipation.– It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow's burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear. —George MacDonald.