Pearls of Thought

Pride.– I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly. —Ruskin.

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear – they eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market. —Alexander Smith.

When pride thaws look for floods. —Bailey.

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others. —Frederick Saunders.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages. —Johnson.

Principles.– Principle is a passion for truth. —Hazlitt.

Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast. —Richter.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate. —G. H. Lewes.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure. —Emerson.

What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery." —Bulwer-Lytton.

The change we personally experience from time to time we obstinately deny to our principles. —Zimmerman.

Printing.– Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever. —George Meredith.

Prison.– Young Crime's finishing school. —Mrs. Balfour.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life. —Beecher.

Procrastination.– Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it. —Charles Buxton.

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin. —Hesiod.

There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late. —Madame Swetchine.

Prodigality.– This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains. —Dr. South.

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave. —Goldsmith.

The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers. —Socrates.

Progress.– All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance. —Gibbon.

What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame. —X. Doudan.

Revolutions never go backwards. —Emerson.

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet. —Bartol.

Progress is lame. —St. Bueve.

We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. —George Eliot.

The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable. —G. H. Lewes.

Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages. —Mazzini.

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward. —Heinrich Heine.

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years. —Mazzini.

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves. —Longfellow.

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow. —Emerson.

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust. —Mazzini.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Promise.– Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and gratitude a thread. —J. Petit Senn.

Proof.– In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses. —Cicero.

Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon. —Shakespeare.

Prosperity.– Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies. —Vauvenargues.

That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned. —Johnson.

Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture. —Æschylus.

Prosperity lets go the bridle. —George Herbert.

Proverbs.– Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription. —Bishop Whately.

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy. —Motherwell.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed. —Lavater.

Prudence.– There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure. —Rochefoucauld.

Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters. —Whitfield.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties. —Aristophanes.

Punctuality.– The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests. —Brillat Savarin.

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Punishment.– One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another. —Juvenal.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine. —Plato.

Punishment is lame, but it comes. —George Herbert.

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender. —Locke.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves? —George Eliot.

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable. —Goldsmith.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it. —Cato.

The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death! —Hawthorne.

Puns.– I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they ought to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit. —Sydney Smith.

Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense. —Addison.

Purposes.– Man proposes, but God disposes. —Thomas à Kempis.

A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps. —Bible.

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen. —Herodotus.

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay. —Smiles.

Pursuit.– The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain. —Longfellow.

The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me. —Lady Montagu.

Q

Quacks.– Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax – the folly and ignorance of mankind. —Colton.

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men. —Thoreau.

Qualities.– Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him. —Goethe.

Quarrels.– Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness. —George Eliot.

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed. —Mme. Necker.

Questions.– There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner? —Johnson.

Quotation.– In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them. —Selden.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy. —Jeremy Taylor.

If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain. —Burke.

It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book. —Coleridge.

Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places. —Hannah More.

I take memorandums of the schools. —Swift.

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths. —Mazzini.

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones. —Trublet.

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it. —Coleridge.

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water. —J. Petit Senn.

As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation. —De Quincey.

R

Rain.– Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply. —Roscommon.

The kind refresher of the summer heats. —Thomson.

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain. —Waller.

The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain. —Dryden.

Rainbow.– That smiling daughter of the storm. —Colton.

Born of the shower, and colored by the sun. —J. C. Prince.

God's glowing covenant. —Hosea Ballou.

Rank.– If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it. —Madame Swetchine.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better. —Wycherley.

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man. —Southerne.

Rashness.– Rashness and haste make all things insecure. —Denham.

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning. —Shakespeare.

Reading.– Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding. —Congreve.

Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself. —Milton.

The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight. —Montesquieu.

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars. —Macaulay.

Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments. —Shakespeare.

The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet. —Coleridge.

Reason.– Reason lies between the spur and the bridle. —George Herbert.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason. —Voltaire.

If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion. —Shakespeare.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities. —Bolingbroke.

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity. —Joubert.

I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so, because I think him so. —Shakespeare.

Reason 's progressive; instinct is complete: swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs. —Young.

Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near, – sees nothing that's above her. —Quarles.

How can finite grasp infinity? —Dryden.

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few. —Goethe.

Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart. —Heinrich Heine.

Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused. —Shakespeare.

Reason may cure illusions but not suffering. —Alfred de Musset.

Reciprocity.– There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word is reciprocity. What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. —Confucius.

Reconciliation.– It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will. —Owen Feltham.

Rectitude.– The great high-road of human welfare lies along the highway of steadfast well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful. —Samuel Smiles.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. —Thoreau.

No man can do right unless he is good, wise, and strong. What wonder we fail? —Charles Buxton.

Refinement.– Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement. —Beecher.

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life. —Beecher.

Reflection.– We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened. —Sydney Smith.

Reform.– We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old – reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. —Emerson.

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light. —Milton.

Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, to curb desire, to break the stubborn will, and work a second nature in the soul. —Rowe.

They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad! —Shakespeare.

Regret.– Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache? —Richter.

Religion.– Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. —Emerson.

I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy! —Sydney Smith.

Nowhere would there be consolation if religion were not. —Jacobi.

Monopolies are just as injurious to religion as to trade. With competition religions preserve their strength, but they will never again flourish in their original glory until religious freedom, or, in other words, free trade among the gods, is introduced. —Heinrich Heine.

A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force, and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair. —Channing.

Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded. —J. Petit Senn.

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith. —Shelley.

The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a certain range, subject to wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel. —Gladstone.

The best religion is the most tolerant. —Emile de Girardin.

Remembrance.– The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others. —Cato.

Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume. —Boufflers.

Remorse.– Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better. —Joubert.

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity. —Rousseau.

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. —Shakespeare.

Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest. —Gray.

Repartee.– The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit. —Molière.

Repentance.– Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid. —Sterling.

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

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell. —Moore.

Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away? —Anna Cora Ritchie.

Repentance is second innocence. —De Bonald.

Repose.– Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity. —Sydney Smith.

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor. —Plutarch.

Reproach.– Few love to hear the sins they love to act. —Shakespeare.

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination. —Mrs. Balfour.

Republic.– Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments. —Walpole.