Pearls of Thought

Why all this toil for the triumphs of an hour? —Young.

The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh. —Prior.

Life's short summer – man is but a flower. —Johnson.

Man lives only to shiver and perspire. —Sydney Smith.

O frail estate of human things! —Dryden.

Many think themselves to be truly God-fearing when they call this world a valley of tears. But I believe they would be more so, if they called it a happy valley. God is more pleased with those who think everything right in the world, than with those who think nothing right. With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment? —Richter.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. —Johnson.

We never live: we are always in the expectation of living. —Voltaire.

Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun. —Augusta Evans.

Light.– Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun sends into our windows, which he pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few. —Dr. Channing.

More light! —Goethe's last words.

Light! Nature's resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom. —Thomson.

Hail! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born! —Milton.

We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch, by which we might behold his works. —Caussin.

Likeness.– Like, but oh, how different! —Wordsworth.

Lips.– Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow. —Bailey.

He kissed me hard, as though he'd pluck up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips. —Shakespeare.

The lips of a fool swallow up himself. —Bible.

Literature.– Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done. —Froude.

The literature of a people must spring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty. —Mrs. Stowe.

Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor. —Coleridge.

When literature is the sole business of life, it becomes a drudgery. When we are able to resort to it only at certain hours, it is a charming relaxation. In my earlier days I was a banker's clerk, obliged to be at the desk everyday from ten till five o'clock; and I shall never forget the delight with which, on returning home, I used to read and write during the evening. —Rogers.

Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related. —Heinrich Heine.

Whatever the skill of any country be in sciences, it is from excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity. —Goldsmith.

Logic.– Logic differeth from rhetoric as the fist from the palm; the one close, the other at large. —Bacon.

Syllogism is of necessary use, even to the lovers of truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or involved discourses. —Locke.

Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth. —Bruyère.

Love.– Fie, fie! how wayward is this foolish love, that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse, and presently, all humbled, will kiss the rod! —Shakespeare.

Love is the cross and passion of the heart; its end, its errand. —P. L. Bailey.

Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish. —George Eliot.

Love while 't is day; night cometh soon, wherein no man or maiden may. —Joaquin Miller.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. —George Eliot.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words. —Shakespeare.

Loves change sure as man or moon, and wane like warm full days of June. —Joaquin Miller.

Take of love as a sober man takes wine; do not get drunk. —Alfred de Musset.

Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. The qualities of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. Can it be true, what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls? I doubt it – I doubt it exceedingly. —Coleridge.

As love increases prudence diminishes. —Rochefoucauld.

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment. —Emerson.

The desire to be beloved is ever restless and unsatisfied; but the love that flows out upon others is a perpetual well-spring from on high. —L. M. Child.

Love is love's reward. —Dryden.

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it is durable, it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain be. —Thoreau.

Love makes all things possible. —Shakespeare.

Economy in love is peace to nature, much like economy in worldly matters; we should be prudent, never love too fast; profusion will not, cannot, always last. —Peter Pindar. (John W. Wolcott.)

There is no fear in love, for perfect love casteth out fear. —Bible.

O love! thy essence is thy purity! Breathe one unhallowed breath upon thy flame and it is gone for ever, and but leaves a sullied vase, – its pure light lost in shame. —Landor.

The pale complexion of true love. —Shakespeare.

Love has no middle term; it either saves or destroys. —Victor Hugo.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable. —Beecher.

In love's war, he who flies is conqueror. —Mrs. Osgood.

Where there is room in the heart there is always room in the house. —Moore.

Love's like the measles, all the worse when it comes late in life. —Douglas Jerrold.

Only they conquer love who run away. —Carew.

The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye. —L. E. Landon.

Love, well thou know'st, no partnership allows; cupid averse rejects divided vows. —Prior.

Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue. —Milton.

Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking. —Schlegel.

The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom. —Antoine Bret.

I have enjoyed the happiness of this world, I have lived and have loved. —Richter.

Life is a flower of which love is the honey. —Victor Hugo.

Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more than love. —Thoreau.

Young love-making, that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to – the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung – are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. —George Eliot.

Love is the loadstone of love. —Mrs. Osgood.

Love is never lasting which flames before it burns. —Feltham.

The best part of woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses, too, that were let fall ready to soothe the wearied feet. —George Eliot.

Love is an Oriental despot. —Madame Swetchine.

We must love as looking one day to hate. —George Herbert.

Love with old men is as the sun upon the snow, it dazzles more than it warms them. —J. Petit Senn.

Love is lowliness; on the wedding ring sparkles no jewel. —Richter.

Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power; and where love seems to fail, it is where self has stepped between and dulled the potency of its rays. —George MacDonald.

To speak of love is to make love. —Balzac.

A man may be a miser of his wealth; he may tie up his talent in a napkin; he may hug himself in his reputation; but he is always generous in his love. Love cannot stay at home; a man cannot keep it to himself. Like light, it is constantly traveling. A man must spend it, must give it away. —Macleod.

Repining love is the stillest; the shady flowers in this spring as in the other, shun sunlight. —Richter.

Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases. —Ségur.

Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous of the passions: it is the only one that includes in its dreams the happiness of some one else. —Alphonse Karr.

A woman whom we truly love is a religion. —Emile de Girardin.

Childhood is only a wearisome prologue: the first act of the human comedy opens only at the moment when love makes a breach in our hearts. —Arsène Houssaye.

The religion of humanity is love. —Mazzini.

He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night, but he who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will not recover his senses until the day of judgment. —Saadi.

Love reasons without reason. —Shakespeare.

It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring – the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, we say spring has come. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Love and a cough cannot be hid. —George Herbert.

Love is the most dunder-headed of all the passions; it never will listen to reason. The very rudiments of logic are unknown to it. "Love has no wherefore," says one of the Latin poets. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end. —Alphonse Karr.

One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death. —Voltaire.

The heart of a woman is never so full of affection that there does not remain a little corner for flattery and love. —Mauvaux.

Love is always blind and tears his hands whenever he tries to gather roses. —Arsène Houssaye.

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. —Voltaire.

Oh! I was mad to intoxicate myself with the wine of love, and to extend my hand to the crown of poets. Pleasure! Poetry! you are perfidious friends. Pain follows you closely. —Arsène Houssaye.

If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits. —Alphonse Karr.

In love, as in everything else, experience is a physician who never comes until after the disorder is cured. —Mme. de la Tour.

One expresses well only the love he does not feel. —Alphonse Karr.

In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken. —Marguerite de Valois.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. —George Eliot.

To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, in a word, to be the idol of one's idol, is exceeding the limit of human joy; it is stealing fire from heaven and deserves death. —Madame de Girardin.

But to enlarge or illustrate this power and effects of love is to set a candle in the sun. —Burton.

There are as many kinds of love as there are races. A great tall German, learned, virtuous, phlegmatic, said one day: "Souls are sisters, fallen from heaven, who all at once recognize and run to meet each other." A little dry Frenchman, hot-blooded, witty, lively, replied to him: "You are right; you can always find shoes to fit." —Taine.

Love supreme defies all sophistry. —George Eliot.

It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains. —Thoreau.

The love of man to woman is a thing common, and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal. —Plato.

We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. —George Eliot.

Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied. —Southey.

Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide. —George Eliot.

Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the humblest professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what keenness of observation is born under the influence of that feeling which drives away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun consumes the vapor of the morning. —Tuckerman.

Luck.– Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Luxury.– Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us. —John Adams.

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses. —Quarles.

O brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus. —Spurgeon.

O Luxury! Thou curst of heaven's decree. —Goldsmith.

Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. —Shakespeare.

Lying.– Lying's a certain mark of cowardice. —Southern.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying. —Pascal.

Every brave man shuns more than death the shame of lying. —Corneille.

It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm. —Washington Allston.

Lies exist only to be extinguished. —Carlyle.

A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies. —Tennyson.

M

Madness.– Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved. —Johnson.

Man.– It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both. —Pascal.

Man, I tell you, is a vicious animal. —Molière.

He is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, – with immortal longings, – with thoughts which sweep the heavens, and wander through eternity. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest. —Carlyle.

Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much obscurity. —Victor Hugo.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and movement, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! —Shakespeare.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs! —Emerson.

In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them. —Walpole.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal. —Alexander Hamilton.

I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command! —Burke.

Men's natures are neither white nor black, but brown. —Charles Buxton.

He is compounded of two very different ingredients, spirit and matter; but how such unallied and disproportioned substances should act upon each other, no man's learning yet could tell him. —Jeremy Collier.

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope, the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at. —Theodore Parker.

Men are but children of a larger growth; our appetites are apt to change as theirs, and full as craving, too, and full as vain. —Dryden.

Little things are great to little men. —Goldsmith.

Man himself is the crowning wonder of creation; the study of his nature the noblest study the world affords. —Gladstone.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires. —Lamartine.

Manners.– A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air. —Beecher.

All manners take a tincture from our own. —Pope.

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us. —Emerson.

We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness. —George Eliot.

We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly. —Voltaire.

Nature is the best posture-master. —Emerson.

Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners. —Johnson.

Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled. —Feltham.

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure. —Emerson.

We are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion. —South.

Better were it to be unborn than to be ill-bred. —Sir W. Raleigh.

Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary. —Jeffrey.

Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze. —Balzac.

Comport thyself in life as at a banquet. If a plate is offered thee, extend thy hand and take it moderately; if it be withdrawn, do not detain it. If it come not to thy side, make not thy desire loudly known, but wait patiently till it be offered thee. —Epictetus.

Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and firm allies. —Bartol.

The "over-formal" often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot. —Whately.

Martyrs.– Even in this world they will have their judgment-day, and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight of nations. —Mrs. Stowe.

It is not the death that makes the martyr, but the cause. —Canon Dale.

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition. —Lamartine.

God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing. —Addison.

Matrimony.– When a man and woman are married their romance ceases and their history commences. —Rochebrune.

It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them. —S. Smith.