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.
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.
There was never found in any age of the world, either philosophy, or sect or religion, or law or discipline, which did so highly exalt the good of communion, and depress good private and particular, as the holy Christian faith: hence it clearly appears that it was one and the same God that gave the Christian law to men who gave those laws of nature to the creatures.—Bacon.
Christianity is intensely practical. She has no trait more striking than her common sense.—Charles Buxton.
Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples. It opened the palaces of Constantinople to the barbarians, but it opened the doors of cottages to the consoling angels of the Saviour.—Alfred de Musset.
Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,—to love him in others' virtues.—Emerson.
Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.—Hawthorne.
Christians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.—Bunyan.
Church.—The Church is a union of men arising from the fellowship of religious life; a union essentially independent of, and differing from, all other forms of human association.—Rev. Dr. Neander.
A place where misdevotion frames a thousand prayers to saints.—Donne.
She may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.—Macaulay.
Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.—Burke.
God never had a house of prayer but Satan had a chapel there.—De Foe.
The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.—Thoreau.
Circumstances.—Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.—Samuel Lover.
What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the impossible.—Balzac.
Civilization.—Mankind's struggle upwards, in which millions are trampled to death, that thousands may mount on their bodies.—Mrs. Balfour.
The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes. First men were in chains which went back to an iron hand. Then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron and ruling by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.—Wendell Phillips.
Nations, like individuals, live and die; but civilization cannot die.—Mazzini.
Clergymen.—The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.—Johnson.
Clergymen consider this world only as a diligence in which they can travel to another.—Napoleon.
The clergy are as like as peas.—Emerson.
Commander.—The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature like an inheritance; it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage.—Voltaire.
The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of the world.—Antoine Lemierre.
He who rules must humor full as much as he commands.—George Eliot.
Commerce.—She may well be termed the younger sister, for, in all emergencies, she looks to agriculture both for defense and for supply.—Colton.
Commerce defies every wind, outrides every tempest, and invades every zone.—Bancroft.
Common Sense.—If common sense has not the brilliancy of the sun it has the fixity of the stars.—Fernan Caballero.
Communists.—One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.—Ebenezer Elliott.
Your leaders wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves. They would all have some people under them; why not then have some people above them.—Johnson.
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are hunger, envy, death.—Heinrich Heine.
Comparison.—All comparisons are odious.—Cervantes.
If we rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison.—Locke.
Compassion.—The dew of compassion is a tear.—Byron.
Compensation.—Cloud and rainbow appear together. There is wisdom in the saying of Feltham, that the whole creation is kept in order by discord, and that vicissitude maintains the world. Many evils bring many blessings. Manna drops in the wilderness—corn grows in Canaan.—Willmott.
It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.—Bovée.
Complaining.—We do not wisely when we vent complaint and censure. Human nature is more sensible of smart in suffering than of pleasure in rejoicing, and the present endurances easily take up our thoughts. We cry out for a little pain, when we do but smile for a great deal of contentment.—Feltham.
Our condition never satisfies us; the present is always the worst. Though Jupiter should grant his request to each, we should continue to importune him.—Fontaine.
Conceit.—Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.—Socrates.
Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.—Bible.
Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.—Addison.
Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything.—X. Doudan.
Apes look down on men as degenerate specimens of their own race, just as Hollanders regard the German language as a corruption of the Dutch.—Heinrich Heine.
If its colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man's great idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is forty.—Charles Buxton.
One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.—George Eliot.
The pious vanity of man makes him adore his own qualities under the pretense of worshiping those of God.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Confidence.—Confidence imparts a wondrous inspiration to its possessor. It bears him on in security, either to meet no danger, or to find matter of glorious trial.—Milton.
Society is built upon trust, and trust upon confidence of one another's integrity.—South.
Conscience.—Conscience is not law; no, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine.—Sterne.
There are moments when the pale and modest star, kindled by God in simple hearts, which men call conscience, illumines our path with truer light than the flaming comet of genius on its magnificent course.—Mazzini.
No thralls like them that inward bondage have.—Sir P. Sidney.
Some people have no perspective in their conscience. Their moral convictions are the same on all subjects. They are like a reader who speaks every word with equal emphasis.—Beecher.
Conscience enables us not merely to learn the right by experiment and induction, but intuitively and in advance of experiment; so, in addition to the experimental way whereby we learn justice from the facts of human history, we have a transcendental way, and learn it from the facts of human nature, and from immediate consciousness.—Theodore Parker.
A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal; and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark.—Lytton.
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.—Goldsmith.
To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism: had we never sinned we should have had no conscience.—Carlyle.
The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own conscience.—Beecher.
Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.—J. Petit Senn.
It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel if a single stitch drops; one single sin indulged in makes a hole you could put your head through.—Charles Buxton.
A still small voice.—Bible.
Constancy.—A good man it is not mine to see; could I see a man possessed of constancy, that would satisfy me.—Confucius.
Constancy is the chimera of love.—Vauvenargues.
Constancy is the complement of all the other human virtues.—Mazzini.
Contempt.—No sacred fane requires us to submit to contempt.—Goethe.
There is not in human nature a more odious disposition than a proneness to contempt, which is a mixture of pride and ill-nature. Nor is there any which more certainly denotes a bad mind; for in a good and benign temper there can be no room for this sensation.—Fielding.
Contentment.—That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy. Happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. He who wants little always has enough.—Zimmermann.
It is both the curse and blessing of our American life that we are never quite content. We all expect to go somewhere before we die, and have a better time when we get there than we can have at home. The bane of our life is discontent. We say we will work so long, and then we will enjoy ourselves. But we find it just as Thackeray has expressed it. "When I was a boy," he said, "I wanted some taffy—it was a shilling—I hadn't one. When I was a man, I had a shilling, but I didn't want any taffy."—Robert Collyer.
Submission is the only reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes.—Sir W. Temple.
Where God hath put exquisite tinge upon the shell washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of bloom in a child's cheek, let us leave it to the owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the fault-finder to complain.—De Witt Talmage.
Contrast.—The lustre of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades. The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.—Johnson.
Controversy.—He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.—Burke.
What Tully says of war may be applied to disputing,—it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.—Pope.
I am yet apt to think that men find their simple ideas agree, though in discourse they confound one another with different names.—Locke.
A man takes contradiction much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well-founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in the violent down-pour of rain.—Richter.
Conversation.—They who have the true taste of conversation enjoy themselves in a communication of each other's excellences, and not in a triumph over their imperfections.—Addison.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.—Montaigne.
Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.—Shakespeare.
No one will ever shine in conversation who thinks of saying fine things; to please one must say many things indifferent, and many very bad.—Francis Lockier.
Conversation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.—Franklin.
Coquetry.—The most effective coquetry is innocence.—Lamartine.
God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.—Victor Hugo.
Affecting to seem unaffected.—Congreve.
Though 'tis pleasant weaving nets, 'tis wiser to make cages.—Moore.
Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!—Shakespeare.
New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.—Dryden.
Courage.—God holds with the strong.—Mazzini.
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.—Colton.
Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes the man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.—Addison.
Courage from hearts, and not from numbers, grows.—Dryden.
As to moral courage, I have very rarely met withthe two o'clock in the morning courage. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision.—Napoleon.
Courage our greatest failings does supply.—Waller.
To bear is to conquer our fate.—Campbell.
Moral courage is more worth having than physical; not only because it is a higher virtue, but because the demand for it is more constant. Physical courage is a virtue which is almost always put away in the lumber room. Moral courage is wanted day by day.—Charles Buxton.
It is only in little matters that men are cowards.—William Henry Herbert.
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.—George Eliot.
He who would arrive at fairy land must face the phantoms.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Courtier.—The court is like a palace built of marble; I mean that it is made up of very hard and very polished people.—La Bruyère.
With the people of court the tongue is the artery of their withered life, the spiral-spring and flag-feather of their souls.—Richter.
Covetousness.—Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.—Shakespeare.
The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardness or ill grace, in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.—Pope.
The world itself is too small for the covetous.—Seneca.
Cowardice.—At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion.—Chapin.
Credulity.—Quick believers need broad shoulders.—George Herbert.
Let us believe what we can and hope for the rest.—De Finod.
When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect.—Joubert.
What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.—George Eliot.
Observe your enemies for they first find out your faults.—Antishenes.
Action is generally defective, and proves an abortion without previous contemplation. Contemplation generates, action propagates.—Feltham.
Crime.—If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them.—Bruyère.
Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.—Burke.
Criticism.—Solomon says rightly: "The wounds made by a friend are worth more than the caresses of a flatterer." Nevertheless, it is better that the friend wound not at all.—Joseph de Maistre.
The rule in carving holds good as to criticism,—never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.—Charles Buxton.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit.—Pope.
Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts, than in that which is innocuous; and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave.—Ruskin.
Certain critics resemble closely those people who when they would laugh show ugly teeth.—Joubert.
Every one is eagle-eyed to see another's faults and his deformity.—Dryden.
For I am nothing if not critical.—Shakespeare.
He who stabs you in the dark with a pen would do the same with a penknife, were he equally safe from detection and the law.—Quintilian.
Silence is the severest criticism.—Charles Buxton.
All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.—Johnson.
It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.—Rufus Griswold.
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may be safely left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.—Bovée.
There are some critics who change everything that comes under their hands to gold, but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes his ears!—J. Petit Senn.
Cruelty.—Cruelty, the sign of currish kind.—Spenser.
One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the by-standers cruel. How hard the English people grew in the time of Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary.—Charles Buxton.
Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.—Burns.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.—George Eliot.
Cultivation.—Cultivation is the economy of force.—Liebig.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror. Hence there is the less reason to be surprised at our inability to enter fully into the feelings and characters of others. No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself will ever have a true understanding of another.—Novalis.
Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand.—Bacon.
... Without art, a nation is a soulless body; without science, a straying wanderer. Without warmth and light, nature cannot thrive, nor humanity increase: the light and warmth of humanity is "art and science."—Kozlay.
Cunning.—Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.—Johnson.
Cleverness and cunning are incompatible. I never saw them united. The latter is the resource of the weak, and is only natural to them; children and fools are always cunning, but clever people never.—Byron.
Discourage cunning in a child; cunning is the ape of wisdom.—Locke.
Cunning signifies especially a habit or gift of overreaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter.—Ruskin.
Curiosity.—A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.—Pope.
The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.—Johnson.
Custom.—The despotism of custom is on the wane; we are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.—John Stuart Mill.
Immemorial custom is transcendent law.—Menu.
In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.—Emerson.
Custom doth make dotards of us all.—Carlyle.
Cynics.—It will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.—Dickens.
Cynicism is old at twenty.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Dandy.—A dandy is a clothes-wearing man,—a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person, and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object,—the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.—Carlyle.
A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool's coat still.—Rivarol.
Danger.—It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea, and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.—Colton.
Death.—It is not death, it is dying, that alarms me.—Montaigne.
What is death? To go out like a light, and in a sweet trance to forget ourselves and all the passing phenomena of the day, as we forget the phantoms of a fleeting dream; to form, as in a dream, new connections with God's world; to enter into a more exalted sphere, and to make a new step up man's graduated ascent of creation.—Zschokke.
Heaven gives its favorites early death.—Byron.
Our respect for the dead, when they arejustdead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.—Ruskin.
There are remedies for all things but death.—Carlyle.
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.—Mme. de Staël.
Too early fitted for a better state.—Dryden.
Death, the dry pedant, spares neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,—monuments of decay, graves of primeval kings.—Heinrich Heine.
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, but has one vacant chair!—Longfellow.
And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds, there's a lean fellow beats all conquerors.—Thomas Dekker.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time.—Goethe.
To the Christian, whose life has been dark with brooding cares that would not lift themselves, and on whom chilling rains of sorrow have fallen at intervals through all his years, death is but the clearing-up shower; and just behind it are the songs of angels, and the serenity and glory of heaven.—Beecher.
That golden key that opes the palace of eternity.—Milton.
When death gives us a long lease of life, it takes as hostages all those whom we have loved.—Madame Necker.
Man makes a death which nature never made.—Young.
The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion—Death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet—of Immortality!—Dickens.
God's finger touched him, and he slept.—Tennyson.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.—Bible.
Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.—Fontenelle.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.—Shakespeare.
Flesh is but the glass which holds the dust that measures all our time, which also shall be crumbled into dust.—George Herbert.
Death expecteth thee everywhere; be wise, therefore, and expect death everywhere.—Quarles.
The world. Oh, the world is so sweet to the dying!—Schiller.
The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it,—the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.—George MacDonald.
The dissolution of forms is no loss in the mass of matter.—Pliny.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death.—Young.
Debt.—He that dies pays all debts.—Shakespeare.
Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life.—Spurgeon.
The first step in debt is like the first step in falsehood, almost involving the necessity of proceeding in the same course, debt following debt as lie follows lie. Haydon, the painter, dated his decline from the day on which he first borrowed money.—Samuel Smiles.
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.—Johnson.
That swamp [of debt] which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there,—in a condition in which, spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.—George Eliot.
Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Deceit.—No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.—Hawthorne.
Idiots only may be cozened twice.—Dryden.
It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.—Fontaine.
There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.—Chapin.
Like unto golden hooks that from the foolish fish their baits do hide.—Spenser.
Libertines are hideous spiders that often catch pretty butterflies.—Diderot.
Decency.—As beauty of body, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in that we observe all the parts with a certain elegance are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behavior which appears in our lives obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions.—Steele.
Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.—Tully.
Declamation.—Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions, or musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious; where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.—Goldsmith.
The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.—Colton.
Deeds.—A word that has been said may be unsaid: it is but air. But when a deed is done, it cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow.—Longfellow.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done!—Shakespeare.
Legal deeds were invented to remind men of their promises, or to convict them of having broken them,—a stigma on the human race.—Bruyère.
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.—Cervantes.
We should believe only in works; words are sold for nothing everywhere.—Rojas.
Delay.—We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light.—Thoreau.
Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action, which ought to be performed! and is delayed in the execution.—Veeshnoo Sarma.
Democracy.—Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.—Carlyle.
The love of democracy is that of equality.—Montesquieu.
Dependence.—The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces.—Mrs. Stowe.
Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of other's bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.—Dante.
How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work, neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other and bear each other's burdens.—G. A. Sala.
We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.—Emerson.
Desire.—It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.—Franklin.
Lack of desire is the greatest riches.—Seneca.
Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.—Johnson.
The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.—Cicero.
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.—Coleridge.
Desires are the pulse of the soul.—Manton.
Despair.—Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.—Fielding.
Leaden-eyed despair.—Keats.
In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in.—De Witt Talmage.
He that despairs limits infinite power to finite apprehensions.—South.
It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his helper is omnipotent.—Jeremy Taylor.
He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model.—South.
Juliet was a fool to kill herself, for in three months she'd have married again, and been glad to be quit of Romeo.—Charles Buxton.
What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.—George Eliot.
Despotism.—It is difficult for power to avoid despotism. The possessors of rude health; the individualities cut out by a few strokes, solid for the very reason that they are all of a piece; the complete characters whose fibres have never been strained by a doubt; the minds that no questions disturb and no aspirations put out of breath,—these, the strong, are also the tyrants.—Countess de Gasparin.
There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.—Daniel Webster.
Destiny.—The scape-goat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a necessity which we set down for invincible, when we have no wish to strive against it.—Mrs. Balfour.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.—George Eliot.
Detention.—Never hold any one by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.—Chesterfield.
Detraction.—Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.—Shakespeare.
In some unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with abutof detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him suspected by their silence.—Feltham.
Dew.—That same dew, which sometimes withers buds, was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes, like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.—Shakespeare.
Earth's liquid jewelry, wrought of air.—P. J. Bailey.
Diet.—Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature: but more especially we should learn to suffer, grow old, and die. Some things are salutary, and others hurtful. Eat with moderation what you know by experience agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience.—Voltaire.
Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.—Washington Irving.
Difficulties.—The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.—Goethe.
The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. Hope is born in the long night of watching and tears. Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality.—Chapin.
How strangely easy difficult things are!—Charles Buxton.
Diffidence.—Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself. If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not, please. But with proper endeavors to please, and a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will.—Chesterfield.
No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.—Emerson.
Dignity.—It is at once the thinnest and most effective of all the coverings under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. Most of the men of dignity, who awe or bore their more genial brethren, are simply men who possess the art of passing off their insensibility for wisdom, their dullness for depth, and of concealing imbecility of intellect under haughtiness of manner.—Whipple.
Dirt.—"Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.—George Eliot.
Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold.—Lamb.
Disappointment.—Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of existence are strewn with them.—Mme. de Staël.
O world! how many hopes thou dost engulf!—Alfred de Musset.
Thirsting for the golden fountain of the fable, from how many streams have we turned away, weary and in disgust!—Bulwer-Lytton.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.—George Eliot.
Ah! what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me.—Richter.
Discourtesy.—Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several,—from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.—La Bruyère.
Discovery.—Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls as a golden link in the great chain of order.—Chapin.
Discretion.—Be discreet in all things, and go render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any.—Wellington.
Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his particular station of life.—Addison.
Dishonesty.—So grasping is dishonesty that it is no respecter of persons: it will cheat friends as well as foes; and, were it possible, even God himself!—Bancroft.
Dispatch.—Use dispatch. Remember that the world only took six days to create. Ask me for whatever you please excepttime: that is the only thing which is beyond my power.—Napoleon.
True dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wares, and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch.—Bacon.
Disposition.—A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.—Fielding.
A good disposition is more valuable than gold; for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.—Addison.
Distrust.—As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.—Wendell Phillips.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?—George Eliot.
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.—Johnson.
Doubt.—Remember Talleyrand's advice, "If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not—don't!" The advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Doubt is hell in the human soul.—Gasparin.
Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul.—J. Petit Senn.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.—Shakespeare.
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.—X. Doudan.
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.—Tennyson.
Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt.—Victor Hugo.
Dreams.—Children of night, of indigestion bred.—Churchill.
A world of the dead in the hues of life.—Mrs. Hemans.
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.—Milton.
Dreams always go by contraries, my dear.—Samuel Lover.
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.—Sir T. Browne.
The mockery of unquiet slumbers.—Shakespeare.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.—Tennyson.
Dress.—It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.—Rousseau.
Duty.—Stern daughter of the voice of God.—Wordsworth.
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life.—Gladstone.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.—Bible.
The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.—George Eliot.
Do the duty which lies nearest to thee.—Goethe.
Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would.—George MacDonald.
To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads!—Byron.
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty to God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.—Thomas Paine.
There is not a moment without some duty.—Cicero.
If doing what ought to be done be made the first business, and success a secondary consideration,—is not this the way to exalt virtue?—Confucius.
The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in what is remote; the work of duty lies in what is easy, and men seek for it in what is difficult.—Mencius.
Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.—Dr. Vinet.
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.—Beecher.
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; the charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers.—Wordsworth.
Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother.—George Eliot.