Pearls of Thought

Fame.– Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the world. —Davenant.

Grant me honest fame, or grant me none. —Pope.

Much of reputation depends on the period in which it rises. The Italians proverbially observe that one half of fame depends on that cause. In dark periods, when talents appear they shine like the sun through a small hole in the window-shutter. The strong beam dazzles amid the surrounding gloom. Open the shutter, and the general diffusion of light attracts no notice. —Walpole.

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler. —Bulwer-Lytton.

One Cæsar lives, – a thousand are forgot! —Young.

Few people make much noise after their deaths who did not do so while they were living. Posterity could not be supposed to rake into the records of past times for the illustrious obscure, and only ratify or annul the lists of great names handed down to them by the voice of common fame. Few people recover from the neglect or obloquy of their contemporaries. The public will hardly be at the pains to try the same cause twice over, or does not like to reverse its own sentence, at least when on the unfavorable side. —Hazlitt.

Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives. —Emile Souvestre.

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it; feel it, and hate in silence. —Washington Allston.

Many have lived on a pedestal who will never have a statue when dead. —Béranger.

I hope the day will never arrive when I shall neither be the object of calumny nor ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten. —Johnson.

A man who cannot win fame in his own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True there are some half dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Fame is the thirst of youth. —Byron.

Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities. —Addison.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame. —Thoreau.

Fanaticism.– Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked. —Voltaire.

Painful and corporeal punishments should never be applied to fanaticism; for, being founded on pride, it glories in persecution. —Beccaria.

The false fire of an overheated mind. —Cowper.

Fanaticism is the child of false zeal and of superstition, the father of intolerance and of persecution. —J. Fletcher.

Fashion.– Fashion is the great governor of this world. It presides not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind. Indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at other times universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion. —Fielding.

Fancy and pride seek things at vast expense. —Young.

A beautiful envelope for mortality, presenting a glittering and polished exterior, the appearance of which gives no certain indication of the real value of what is contained therein. —Mrs. Balfour.

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes, – the vulgar. —Leigh Hunt.

Faults.– To acknowledge our faults when we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends, in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, is pride. —Confucius.

The first fault is the child of simplicity, but every other the offspring of guilt. —Goldsmith.

Fear.– It is no ways congruous that God should be frightening men into truth who were made to be wrought upon by calm evidence and gentle methods of persuasion. —Atterbury.

Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage. —Sir P. Sidney.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. —George Sewell.

Fear invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones. —Chesterfield.

Felicity.– The world produces for every pint of honey a gallon of gall; for every dram of pleasure a pound of pain; for every inch of mirth an ell of moan; and as the ivy twines around the oak, so does misery and misfortune encompass the happy man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed felicity, is not a plant of earthly growth; her gardens are the skies. —Burton.

Fickleness.– Everything by starts, and nothing long. —Dryden.

It will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change. —Ruskin.

Fiction.– Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest. —Gray.

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility. —Sir J. Mackintosh.

I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history. —Rev. John Foster.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting: there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction. —Dryden.

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine. —Channing.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not aware that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever. —Macaulay.

Those who delight in the study of human nature may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us [Jane Austen's Novels]. —Archbishop Whately.

Firmness.– The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy. —Longfellow.

Stand firm and immovable as an anvil when it is beaten upon. —St. Ignatius.

Flattery.– The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy. —Molière.

He does me double wrong that wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue. —Shakespeare.

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where, although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived, since words that cost little are exchanged for hopes that cost less. —Colton.

The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us. —Madame Swetchine.

Though flattery blossoms like friendship, yet there is a great difference in the fruit. —Socrates.

The coin that is most current among mankind is flattery; the only benefit of which is that by hearing what we are not we may be instructed what we ought to be. —Swift.

Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within. —Plutarch.

Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his fancy, and drives him to a doting upon his own person. —Jeremy Collier.

Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous. —Sir W. Raleigh.

Out of the pulpit, I trust none can accuse me of too much plainness of speech; but there, madame [Queen Mary], I am not my own master, but must speak that which I am commanded by the King of kings, and dare not, on my soul, flatter any one on the face of all the earth —John Knox.

Flowers.– Luther always kept a flower in a glass on his writing-table; and when he was waging his great public controversy with Eckius he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley, – he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he marshals the flowers. —Mrs. Stowe.

Flowers, leaves, fruit, are the air-woven children of light. —Moleschott.

Ye pretty daughters of the Earth and Sun. —Sir Walter Raleigh.

I always think the flowers can see us and know what we are thinking about. —George Eliot.

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, – a feast without a welcome! Are not flowers the stars of the earth? and are not our stars the flowers of heaven? —Mrs. Balfour.

What a pity flowers can utter no sound! A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle, – oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! —Beecher.

The bright mosaic, that with storied beauty, the floor of nature's temple tessellate. —Horace Smith.

Fools.– You pity a man who is lame or blind, but you never pity him for being a fool, which is often a much greater misfortune. —Sydney Smith.

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant fool. —Molière.

Of all thieves fools are the worst; they rob you of time and temper. —Goethe.

Fortune makes folly her peculiar care. —Churchill.

It would be easier to endow a fool with intellect than to persuade him that he had none. —Babinet.

There are many more fools in the world than there are knaves, otherwise the knaves could not exist. —Bulwer-Lytton.

There are more fools than sages, and among sages there is more folly than wisdom. —Chamfort.

Foppery.– Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb and always a coxcomb. —Johnson.

Foppery is the egotism of clothes. —Victor Hugo.

Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making. —Addison.

Forbearance.– The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hand it came. —Longfellow.

Forethought.– Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils. —Colton.

Whoever fails to turn aside the ills of life by prudent forethought, must submit to fulfill the course of destiny. —Schiller.

In life, as in chess, forethought wins. —Charles Buxton.

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand. —Confucius.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth: we are saved by making the future present to ourselves. —George Eliot.

Forgetfulness.– There is nothing, no, nothing, innocent or good that dies and is forgotten: let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, or drowned in the deep sea. Forgotten! Oh, if the deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear! for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves! —Dickens.

Forgiveness.– It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. That conduct will be continued by our fears which commenced in our resentment. He that has gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion will not feel himself quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth. —Colton.

They never pardon who commit the wrong. —Dryden.

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. —Dickens.

'Tis easier for the generous to forgive than for offense to ask it. —Thomson.

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive. —Bulwer-Lytton.

It is easy enough to forgive your enemies, if you have not the means to harm them. —Heinrich Heine.

More bounteous run rivers when the ice that locked their flow melts into their waters. And when fine natures relent, their kindness is swelled by the thaw. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Fortitude.– White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments. —Théophile Gautier.

There is a strength of quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess. —Tuckerman.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues. —Locke.

Fortune.– Fortune loves only the young. —Charles V.

Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not. —Ben Jonson.

It is often the easiest move that completes the game. Fortune is like the lady whom a lover carried off from all his rivals by putting an additional lace upon his liveries. —Bulwer-Lytton.

The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly. —Bovée.

The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found at last to be of our own producing. —Goldsmith.

Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who certainly cannot help themselves. —Colton.

Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together. —Douglas Jerrold.

There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. —Cowley.

Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, she has made them fortunate. —Montaigne.

See'st thou not what various fortunes the Divinity makes man to pass through, changing and turning them from day to day? —Euripides.

Fortune is but a synonymous word for nature and necessity. —Bentley.

Foolish I deem him who, thinking that his state is blest, rejoices in security; for Fortune, like a man distempered in his senses, leaps now this way, now that, and no man is always fortunate. —Euripides.

They say Fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit. —George Eliot.

If Fortune has fairly sat on a man, he takes it for granted that life consists in being sat upon. But to be coddled on Fortune's knee, and then have his ears boxed, that is aggravating. —Charles Buxton.

Fraud.– The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily will it be swallowed; since folly will always find faith wherever impostors will find impudence. —Colton.

Friendship.– Friendship has steps which lead up to the throne of God, though all spirits come to the Infinite; only Love is satiable, and like Truth, admits of no three degrees of comparison; and a simple being fills the heart. —Richter.

Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. —Bible.

Fix yourself upon the wealthy. In a word, take this for a golden rule through life: Never, never have a friend that is poorer than yourself. —Douglas Jerrold.

Experience has taught me that the only friends we can call our own, who can have no change, are those over whom the grave has closed; the seal of death is the only seal of friendship. —Byron.

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues. —Thoreau.

So great a happiness do I esteem it to be loved, that I fancy every blessing both from gods and men ready to descend spontaneously upon him who is loved. —Xenophon.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. —Thoreau.

The friendship between great men is rarely intimate or permanent. It is a Boswell that most appreciates a Johnson. Genius has no brother, no co-mate; the love it inspires is that of a pupil or a son. —Bulwer-Lytton.

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame. —Colton.

Never contract a friendship with a man that is not better than thyself. —Confucius.

There are three friendships which are advantageous, and three which are injurious. Friendship with the upright, friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of much information, – these are advantageous. Friendship with the man of specious airs, friendship with the insinuatingly soft, friendship with the glib-tongued, – these are injurious. —Confucius.

Friendship survives death better than absence. —J. Petit Senn.

This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys and cutteth griefs in half: for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. —Bacon.

Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the declining sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart. —Washington Irving.

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees. —Whately.

An old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of. —George Eliot.

Fun.– There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, and I do like it in others. Oh, we need it, – we need all the counter-weights we can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them? —Haliburton.

Futurity.– The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, the last duty done. —George MacDonald.

We always live prospectively, never retrospectively, and there is no abiding moment. —Jacobi.

Another life, if it were not better than this, would be less a promise than a threat. —J. Petit Senn.

The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod. —Milton.

G

Gambling.– Gaming is a kind of tacit confession that the company engaged therein do, in general, exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes, and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer. —Blackstone.

A mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. —Johnson.

Gems.– How very beautiful these gems are! It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John. They look like fragments of heaven. —George Eliot.

Generosity.– A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes brother to a beggar. There is wisdom in generosity as in everything else. —Spurgeon.

Generosity is the accompaniment of high birth; pity and gratitude are its attendants. —Corneille.

It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself. —George Eliot.

If cruelty has its expiations and its remorses, generosity has its chances and its turns of good fortune; as if Providence reserved them for fitting occasions, that noble hearts may not be discouraged. —Lamartine.

Genius.– Genius is rarely found without some mixture of eccentricity, as the strength of spirit is proved by the bubbles on its surface. —Mrs. Balfour.

All great men are in some degree inspired. —Cicero.

This is the highest miracle of genius: that things which are not should be as though they were; that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. —Macaulay.

The path of genius is not less obstructed with disappointment than that of ambition. —Voltaire.

One misfortune of extraordinary geniuses is that their very friends are more apt to admire than love them. —Pope.

Genius speaks only to genius. —Stanislaus.

A nation does wisely, if not well, in starving her men of genius. Fatten them, and they are done for. —Charles Buxton.

Genius has no brother. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Genius never grows old; young to-day, mature yesterday, vigorous to-morrow: always immortal. It is peculiar to no sex or condition, and is the divine gift to woman no less than to man. —Juan Lewis.

Gentleman.– A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say, simply, "fineness of nature." This is of course compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. —Ruskin.

It is a grand old name, that of gentleman, and has been recognized as a rank and power in all stages of society. To possess this character is a dignity of itself, commanding the instinctive homage of every generous mind, and those who will not bow to titular rank will yet do homage to the gentleman. His qualities depend not upon fashion or manners, but upon moral worth; not on personal possessions, but on personal qualities. The Psalmist briefly describes him as one "that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart." —Samuel Smiles.