Pearls of Thought

Married in haste, we repent at leisure. —Congreve.

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter. —Johnson.

Hanging and wiving go by destiny. —Shakespeare.

The married man is like the bee that fixes his hive, augments the world, benefits the republic, and by a daily diligence, without wronging any, profits all; but he who contemns wedlock, like a wasp, wanders an offence to the world, lives upon spoil and rapine, disturbs peace, steals sweets that are none of his own, and, by robbing the hives of others, meets misery as his due reward. —Feltham.

One can, with dignity, be wife and widow but once. —Joubert.

Few natures can preserve through years the poetry of the first passionate illusion. That can alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial that consecrates its grave. —Bulwer-Lytton.

It's hard to wive and thrive both in a year. —Tennyson.

Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything. —Shakespeare.

Wedlock's like wine, not properly judged of till the second glass. —Douglas Jerrold.

A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin. —Johnson.

He that marries is like the Doge who was wedded to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries: mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him. —Heinrich Heine.

A husband is a plaster that cures all the ills of girlhood. —Molière.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages. —Thoreau.

The love of some men for their wives is like that of Alfieri for his horse. "My attachment for him," said he, "went so far as to destroy my peace every time that he had the least ailment; but my love for him did not prevent me from fretting and chafing him whenever he did not wish to go my way." —Bovée.

No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea. —Balzac.

Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship? —George Eliot.

Mediocrity.– Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people. —Joubert.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. —Gladstone.

Meditation.– Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. —Shakespeare.

'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, and ask them what report they bore to heaven, and how they might have borne more welcome news. —Young.

Meditation is that exercise of the mind by which it recalls a known truth, as some kind of creatures do their food, to be ruminated upon till all vicious parts be extracted. —Bishop Horne.

Meekness.– The flower of meekness grows on a stem of grace. —J. Montgomery.

A boy was once asked what meekness was. He thought for a moment and said, "Meekness gives smooth answers to rough questions." —Mrs. Balfour.

Melancholy.– Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth? —Byron.

A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind. —Dryden.

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy. —Milton.

The noontide sun is dark, and music discord, when the heart is low. —Young.

Memory.– Memory is what makes us young or old. —Alfred de Musset.

No canvas absorbs color like memory. —Willmott.

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies. —Colton.

Joy's recollection is no longer joy; but sorrow's memory is sorrow still. —Byron.

A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble. —L. E. Landon.

And fondly mourn the dear delusions gone. —Prior.

How can such deep-imprinted images sleep in us at times, till a word, a sound, awake them? —Lessing.

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention; it is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty. —Willmott.

Memory is the scribe of the soul. —Aristotle.

The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama. —George Eliot.

We must always have old memories and young hopes. —Arsène Houssaye.

They teach us to remember; why do not they teach us to forget? There is not a man living who has not, some time in his life, admitted that memory was as much of a curse as a blessing. —F. A. Durivage.

Mercy.– Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice! —Longfellow.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy. —Shakespeare.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. —Shakespeare.

Give money, but never lend it. Giving it only makes a man ungrateful; lending it makes him an enemy. —Dumas.

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars, – not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment-seat. —Chapin.

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. —George Eliot.

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice. —Cervantes.

Milton.– His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. —Macaulay.

Mind.– It is with diseases of the mind as with diseases of the body, we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do. —Colton.

The end which at present calls forth our efforts will be found when it is once gained to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. —Johnson.

Minds filled with vivid, imaginative thoughts, are the most indolent in reproducing. Clear, cold, hard minds are productive. They have to retrace a very simple design. —X. Doudan.

The mind is the atmosphere of the soul. —Joubert.

What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind? —Prior.

Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a kind of famine for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt sick sailor's call for a lemon or raw potato. —Holmes.

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency of the water. —Pope.

A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Mischief.– The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year. —Voltaire.

Miser.– The miser swimming in gold seems to me like a thirsty fish. —J. Petit Senn.

In all meanness there is a deficit of intellect as well as of heart, and even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Misery.– There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples. —Holmes.

Misery is so little appertaining to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we in the same degree of illusion only lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us. —Richter.

Misfortune.– If all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by such a division. —Socrates.

Depend upon it, that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery, there never is any recourse to the mention of it. —Johnson.

Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. Beauteous soul! when a storm approaches thee be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower. —Richter.

Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure. —Alcott.

There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room. —George Eliot.

Men shut their doors against the setting sun. —Shakespeare.

He that is down needs fear no fall. —Bunyan.

Moderation.– Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a Northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. —Macaulay.

The superior man wishes to be slow in his words, and earnest in his conduct. —Confucius.

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion; as if the short spring days were an eternity. —Thoreau.

It is a little stream which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course. —Madame Swetchine.

Modesty.– False modesty is the last refinement of vanity. It is a lie. —Bruyère.

The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish Modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it. —Addison.

He of his port was meek as is a maid. —Chaucer.

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others. —Hazlitt.

Modesty, who, when she goes, is gone forever. —Landor.

Modesty is the conscience of the body. —Balzac.

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety. —Taine.

Virtue which shuns the day. —Addison.

Modesty and the dew love the shade. Each shine in the open day only to be exhaled to heaven. —J. Petit Senn.

Modesty is still a provocation. —Poincelot.

Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity of noble souls. —E. de Girardin.

Money.– Wisdom, knowledge, power – all combined. —Byron.

Oh, what a world of vile ill-favored faults looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year! —Shakespeare.

It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money. —Hawthorne.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. —Franklin.

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can. —Wesley.

The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labor, which is best encouraged by the love of money. —Sydney Smith.

Ready money is Aladdin's lamp. —Byron.

Money does all things; for it gives and it takes away, it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward, mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter. —L'Estrange.

Mammon is the largest slave-holder in the world. —Fred. Saunders.

But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms. —George MacDonald.

Money, the life-blood of the nation. —Swift.

Moon.– The silver empress of the night. —Tickell.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank. —Shakespeare.

Mysterious veil of brightness made. —Butler.

Cynthia, fair regent of the night. —Gay.

The maiden moon in her mantle of blue. —Joaquin Miller.

Morals.– Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. —Macaulay.

We like the expression of Raphael's faces without an edict to enforce it. I do not see why there should not be a taste in morals formed on the same principle. —Hazlitt.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. —Thoreau.

Morning.– Vanished night, shot through with orient beams. —Milton.

The dewy morn, with breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom. —Byron.

Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top. —Shakespeare.

When the glad sun, exulting in his might, comes from the dusky-curtained tents of night. —Emma C. Embury.

The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day. —Shakespeare.

Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds. —Calderon.

Temperate as the morn. —Shakespeare.

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Mother.– Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows. —Macaulay.

Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother. —Bulwer-Lytton.

I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had not been for one thing, the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caused me to repeat the Lord's Prayer. —Thomas Randolph.

The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man. —George Eliot.

When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother, – mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman. —Luther.

There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart. —Hemans.

Motive.– The morality of an action depends upon the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but with respect to me, the action is very wrong. —Johnson.

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning. —Chapin.

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. —Kreeshna.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. —George Eliot.

Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, every labor enjoyment. —Jacobi.

Mourning.– Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still! —Tennyson.

The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews. —Thomson.

Music.– Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune. —Lamb.

All musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion. —Sydney Smith.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong. —Mrs. Stowe.

There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say that music is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of space. —Heinrich Heine.

The hidden soul of harmony. —Milton.

Give me some music! music, moody food of us that trade in love. —Shakespeare.

Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. —Tuckerman.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie. —Milton.

Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect. —Goethe.

Music, which gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes. —Tennyson.

Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. —George Eliot.

Music can noble hints impart, engender fury, kindle love, with unsuspected eloquence can move and manage all the man with secret art. —Addison.

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world; one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound. —Mazzini.

N

Naïveté.– Naïveté is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is not natural. —Mendelssohn.

Name.– A virtuous name is the precious only good for which queens and peasants' wives must contest together. —Schiller.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself. —Goethe.

Napoleon.– Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones. —Byron.

Napoleon I. might have been the Washington of France; he preferred to be another Attila, – a question of taste. —F. A. Durivage.

Nature.– Nature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her. —Bacon.

Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature. —De Finod.

Nature, – a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere. —Emerson.

Nature is poetic, but not mankind. When one aims at truth it is easier to find the poetic side of nature than of man. —X. Doudan.

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth. —Chapin.

Nature is no sentimentalist, – does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. —Emerson.

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit: a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master, – the root, the branch, the fruits, – the principles, the consequences. —Pascal.

A noble nature can alone attract the noble, and alone knows how to retain them. —Goethe.

Nature, the vicar of the almighty Lord. —Chaucer.

A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory. —Coleridge.

We, by art, unteach what Nature taught. —Dryden.

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll. —Alcott.

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. —Emerson.

Nature is an absolute and jealous divinity. Lovely, eloquent, and instructive in all her inequalities and contrasts, she hides her face, and remains mute to those who, by attempting to re-fashion her, profane her. —Mazzini.