Pearls of Thought

The root of all benevolent actions is filial piety and fraternal love. —Confucius.

True benevolence is to love all men. Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness. —Confucius.

It is in contemplating man at a distance that we become benevolent. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Bible.– As those wines which flow from the first treading of the grapes are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the Scriptures and are not wrung into controversies and commonplaces. —Bacon.

They who are not induced to believe and live as they ought by those discoveries which God hath made in Scripture, would stand out against any evidence whatever; even that of a messenger sent express from the other world. —Atterbury.

But what is meant, after all, by uneducated, in a time when books have come into the world – come to be household furniture in every habitation of the civilized world? In the poorest cottage are books – is one book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him. —Carlyle.

A stream where alike the elephant may swim and the lamb may wade. —Gregory the Great.

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high, and contained in the sacred writings. —Herschel.

I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence. —Landor.

Bigotry.– A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power. —Boileau.

Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenhoeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer. —Colton.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side. —Addison.

The worst of mad men is a saint run mad. —Pope.

Biography.– As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. —Plutarch.

Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels – teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action for their own and the world's good. —Samuel Smiles.

It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people, who have lived with a man, know what to remark about him. —Johnson.

History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. —Johnson.

Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skillful hand to construct the skeleton. —Willmott.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days. —Plutarch.

Birth.– Noble in appearance, but this is mere outside; many noble born are base. —Euripides.

Blessings.– The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. —Charles Lamb.

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires. —St. Augustine.

We mistake the gratuitous blessings of Heaven for the fruits of our own industry. —L'Estrange.

Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just. —Plato.

How blessings brighten as they take their flight! —Young.

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many: not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. —Charles Dickens.

Blush.– The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame. —Mrs. Balfour.

I have mark'd a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face; a thousand innocent shames, in angel whiteness, bear away those blushes. —Shakespeare.

The glow of the angel in woman. —Mrs. Balfour.

Such blushes as adorn the ruddy welkin or the purple morn. —Ovid.

Luminous escapes of thought. —Moore.

Blustering.– Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field – that, of course, they are many in number, – or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour. —Burke.

There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than a way of braying. —L'Estrange.

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them. —George Eliot.

Boasting.– Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves with less noise. —W. Secker.

With all his tumid boasts, he's like the sword-fish, who only wears his weapon in his mouth. —Madden.

Every braggart shall be found an ass. —Shakespeare.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred. —Charles Buxton.

Boldness.– Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall. —Smollett.

Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more. —Lemesles.

Bondage.– The iron chain and the silken cord, both equally are bonds. —Schiller.

Books.– If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! —Thackeray.

When a new book comes out I read an old one. —Rogers.

Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter. —Paxton Hood.

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. —Thoreau.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, – it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. —Beecher.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. —Fénelon.

We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. —Plutarch.

To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor. —Pope.

The medicine of the mind. —Diodorus.

Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof. —Channing.

Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs. —George Eliot.

Bores.– I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer's noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. —Lamb.

These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men. —Dryden.

If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of. —Cowley.

The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril! —Madame Swetchine.

Borrowing.– You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world's goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are. —Heinrich Heine.

According to the security you offer to her, Fortune makes her loans easy or ruinous. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Bravery.– True bravery is shown by performing without witnesses what one might be capable of doing before all the world. —Rochefoucauld.

'Tis late before the brave despair. —Thompson.

The bravest men are subject most to chance. —Dryden.

The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes. —Byron.

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors. —George Eliot.

Brevity.– To make pleasures pleasant shorten them. —Charles Buxton.

Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress? —Johnson.

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. —Feltham.

I saw one excellency was within my reach – it was brevity, and I determined to obtain it. —Jay.

Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. —Southey.

Concentration alone conquers. —Charles Buxton.

The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit. —Alfred Bougeart.

Oratory, like the Drama, abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. —Bulwer-Lytton.

The fewer words the better prayer. —Luther.

Business.– Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it. —Tacitus.

C

Calumny.– Neglected calumny soon expires; show that you are hurt, and you give it the appearance of truth. —Tacitus.

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains, and traverses deserts with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and, like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow. —Colton.

Cant.– The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language. —Swift.

There is such a thing as a peculiar word or phrase cleaving, as it were, to the memory of the writer or speaker, and presenting itself to his utterance at every turn. When we observe this, we call it a cant word or a cant phrase. —Paley.

Caution.– Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. —Burke.

Censure.– Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves. —Juvenal.

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues. —Hazlitt.

Censure is like the lightning which strikes the highest mountains. —Balthasar Gracian.

Chance.– There must be chance in the midst of design; by which we mean that events which are not designed necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. —Paley.

Chance generally favors the prudent. —Joubert.

It is strictly and philosophically true in nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause. —Adam Clarke.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster! —Jeremy Taylor.

He who distrusts the security of chance takes more pains to effect the safety which results from labor. To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: "Leave no stone unturned." —Bulwer-Lytton.

Change.– The great world spins forever down the ringing grooves of change. —Tennyson.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. —Byron.

In this world of change, naught which comes stays, and naught which goes is lost. —Madame Swetchine.

Character.– As there is much beast and some devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed. —Coleridge.

Character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do. —George Eliot.

Grit is the grain of character. It may generally be described as heroism materialized, – spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance of the man. —Whipple.

Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. —George Eliot.

Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone —Bartol.

Character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well-governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities in the main which rule the world. —Samuel Smiles.

He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him would seem vicious and miserable. —Jeremy Taylor.

In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character: he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies. —Watts.

Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another. —Richter.

We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being. —Thoreau.

Charity.– Charity is a principle of prevailing love to God and good-will to men, which effectually inclines one endued with it to glorify God, and to do good to others. —Cruden.

The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. —Buckminster.

The charities that soothe, and heat, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers. —Wordsworth.

Prayer carries us half way to God, fasting brings us to the door of his palace, and alms-giving procures us admission. —Koran.

Shall we repine at a little misplaced charity, we who could no way foresee the effect, – when an all-knowing, all-wise Being showers down every day his benefits on the unthankful and undeserving? —Atterbury.

As the purse is emptied the heart is filled. —Victor Hugo.

What we employ in charitable uses during our lives is given away from ourselves: what we bequeath at our death is given from others only, as our nearest relations. —Atterbury.

Goodness answers to the theological virtue of charity, and admits no excess but error; the desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess: neither can angel or man come into danger by it. —Bacon.

Poplicola's doors were opened on the outside, to save the people even the common civility of asking entrance; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where want itself was a powerful mediator. —Dryden.

When thy brother has lost all that he ever had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think to lick him whole again only with thy tongue? —South.

What we frankly give, forever is our own. —Granville.

Faith and hope themselves shall die, while deathless charity remains. —Prior.

The place of charity, like that of God, is everywhere. —Professor Vinet.

People do not care to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draftment upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there. —Mackenzie.

Chastity.– Chastity enables the soul to breathe a pure air in the foulest places; continence makes her strong, no matter in what condition the body may be; her sway over the senses makes her queenly; her light and peace render her beautiful. —Joubert.

Cheerfulness.– Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. —Samuel Smiles.

There is no Christian duty that is not to be seasoned and set off with cheerishness, – which in a thousand outward and intermitting crosses may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears. —Milton.

Such a man, truly wise, creams of nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. —Swift.

Be thou like the bird perched upon some frail thing, although he feels the branch bending beneath him, yet loudly sings, knowing full well that he has wings. —Mme. de Gasparin.

Children.– With children we must mix gentleness with firmness; they must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted. If we never have headaches through rebuking them, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up. Be obeyed at all costs. If you yield up your authority once, you will hardly ever get it again. —Spurgeon.

The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun. —Richter.

The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. —Thackeray.

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. —George Eliot.

Children are excellent physiognomists and soon discover their real friends. Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are. What is childhood but a series of happy delusions? —Sydney Smith.

The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the cradle foot. —Richter.

A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks. —Southey.

Children have more need of models than of critics. —Joubert.

The bearing and training of a child is woman's wisdom. —Tennyson.

One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small mythologies of its own. —Holmes.

Do not shorten the beautiful veil of mist covering childhood's futurity, by too hastily drawing away; but permit that joy to be of early commencement and of long duration, which lights up life so beautifully. The longer the morning dew remains hanging in the blossoms of flowers, the more beautiful the day. —Richter.

Where children are there is the golden age. —Novalis.

In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. —George Eliot.

The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them happy, you have wronged them; no other good they may get can make up for that. —Charles Buxton.

Christ.– Our religion sets before us, not the example of a stupid stoic who had by obstinate principles hardened himself against all sense of pain beyond the common measures of humanity, but an example of a man like ourselves, that had a tender sense of the least suffering, and yet patiently endured the greatest. —Tillotson.

However consonant to reason his precepts appeared, nothing could have tempted men to acknowledge him as their God and Saviour but their being firmly persuaded of the miracles he wrought. —Addison.

Imitate Jesus Christ. —Franklin.

The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it is history, and in general, only that history is history which might also be fable. —Novalis.

Christianity.– Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered tones of her blessed voice. —Coleridge.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth. —Bacon.

No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good. —Lord Bolingbroke.

Far beyond all other political powers of Christianity is the demiurgic power of this religion over the kingdoms of human opinion. —De Quincey.

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, – the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. —De Tocqueville.

Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not particularly meant for its benefit and use. If nature gives to us capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kindness and goodness and tenderness on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to conceive a Being must be for our benefit and use; it would not be for our benefit and use if it were a lie. —Bulwer-Lytton.

A man can no more be a Christian without facing evil and conquering it than he can be a soldier without going to battle, facing the cannon's mouth, and encountering the enemy in the field. —Chapin.