The king-becoming graces—devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.—Shakespeare.
Know you not, master, to some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies? No more do yours; your virtues, gentle master, are sanctified and holy traitors to you. Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely envenoms him that bears it!—Shakespeare.
How inimitably graceful children are before they learn to dance!—Coleridge.
That word, grace, in an ungracious mouth, is but profane.—Shakespeare.
Grace comes as oft clad in the dusky robe of desolation as in white attire.—Sir J. Beaumont.
Gratitude.—Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.—Johnson.
God is pleased with no music below so much as the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.—Jeremy Taylor.
No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.—Colton.
Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating, affection of the mind: we never reflect on the man we love without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone rises to our ideas as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom.—Goldsmith.
Gratitude is the virtue most deified and most deserted. It is the ornament of rhetoric and the libel of practical life.—J. W. Forney.
Grave.—Since the silent shore awaits at last even those who longest miss the old Archer's arrow, perhaps the early grave which men weep over may be meant to save.—Byron.
The grave is, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains that dead flat of social equality that life in its every principle so heartily abhors; and that equality the grave will perpetuate to the end of time.—Bulwer-Lytton.
The reconciling grave.—Southern.
The grave where even the great find rest.—Pope.
Oh, how small a portion of earth will hold us when we are dead, who ambitiously seek after the whole world while we are living!—Philip, King of Macedon.
The cradle of transformation.—Mazzini.
The graves of those we have loved and lost distress and console us.—Arsène Houssaye.
Gravity.—The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge than a man is worth.—Sterne.
Gravity is but the rind of wisdom; but it is a preservative rind.—Joubert.
Gravity must be natural and simple. There must be urbanity and tenderness in it. A man must not formalize on everything. He who formalizes on everything is a fool, and a grave fool is perhaps more injurious than a light fool.—Cecil.
Greatness.—There is but one method, and that is hard labor; and a man who will not pay that price for greatness had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or sport with the tangles of Neæra's hair, or talk of bullocks, and glory in the goad!—Sidney Smith.
A really great man is known by three signs,—generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, and moderation in success.—Bismarck.
The great men of the earth are but the marking stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.—Mazzini.
A multitude of eyes will narrowly inspect every part of an eminent man, consider him nicely in all views, and not be a little pleased when they have taken him in the worst and most disadvantageous lights.—Addison.
What you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will never multiply its quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the best thing that men can generally do is—to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds out of our own charcoal.—Ruskin.
Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.—Bacon.
The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore.—Macaulay.
Great men never make a bad use of their superiority; they see it, they feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.—Rousseau.
He who is great when he falls is great in his prostration, and is no more an object of contempt than when men tread on the ruins of sacred buildings, which men of piety venerate no less than if they stood.—Seneca.
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.—Beecher.
Greatness seems in her [Madame de Maintenon] to take its noblest form, that of simplicity.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Grief.—Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? for every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.—Sydney Smith.
Some griefs are medicinable; and this is one.—Shakespeare.
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief bedigested. And then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.—Johnson.
Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.—P. J. Bailey.
All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness, while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.—Madame Swetchine.
Grief has been compared to a hydra, for every one that dies two are born.—Calderon.
Grief, like night, is salutary. It cools down the soul by putting out its feverish fires; and if it oppresses her, it also compresses her energies. The load once gone, she will go forth with greater buoyancy to new pleasures.—Dr. Pulsford.
What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief.—Shakespeare.
Guilt.—All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.—Shakespeare.
Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past, terrors of the future,—these are the domestic Furies that are ever present to the mind of the impious.—Cicero.
Guiltiness will speak though tongues were out of use.—Shakespeare.
Despair alone makes guilty men be bold.—Coleridge.
The sin lessens in human estimation only as the guilt increases.—Schiller.
There are no greater prudes than those women who have some secret to hide.—George Sand.
Gunpowder.—If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.—Gibbon.
A coarse-grained powder, used by cross-grained people, playing at cross-grained purposes.—Marryatt.
Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first, and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the report is heard, so that it maketh a noise, not by way of warning, but of triumph.—Fuller.
Habits.—Habits are soon assumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.—Cowper.
Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon.—Cicero.
Unless the habit leads to happiness, the best habit is to contract none.—Zimmerman.
The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.—George D. Boardman.
Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.—Bacon.
That beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly.—George Eliot.
Habits are the daughters of action, but they nurse their mothers, and give birth to daughters after her image, more lovely and prosperous.—Jeremy Taylor.
Hair.—The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning.—Luther.
Her head was bare, but for her native ornament of hair, which in a simple knot was tied above; sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!—Dryden.
The robe which curious nature weaves to hang upon the head.—Dekker.
Robed in the long night of her deep hair.—Tennyson.
Hand.—Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time.—Quintilian.
The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony, declined with Paganism; but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. At present it is only practiced as a mark of obedience from the subject to the sovereign, and by lovers, who are solicitous to preserve this ancient usage in its full power.—Disraeli.
Handsome.—They are as heaven made them, handsome enough if they be good enough; for handsome is that handsome does.—Goldsmith.
Happiness.—The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman; the foundation of political happiness is confidence in the integrity of man; the foundation of all happiness, temporal and eternal, is reliance on the goodness of God.—Landor.
To remember happiness which cannot be restored is pain, but of a softened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions that we bitterly repent; still, in the most checkered life, I firmly think there are so many little rays of sunshine to look back upon that I do not believe any mortal would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters of Lethe if he had it in his power.—Dickens.
That man is never happy for the present is so true that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.—Johnson.
It is a lucky eel that escapes skinning. The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery.—George Eliot.
That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equallysatisfied, but not equallyhappy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.—Johnson.
Happiness doats on her work, and is prodigal to her favorite. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities.—Landor.
Sensations sweet, felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.—Wordsworth.
Great happiness is the fire ordeal of mankind, great misfortune only the trial by water; for the former opens a large extent of futurity, whereas the latter circumscribes or closes it.—Richter.
Prospective happiness is perhaps the only real happiness in the world.—Alfred de Musset.
Nature and individuals are generally best when they are happiest, and deserve heaven most when they have learnt rightly to enjoy it. Tears of sorrow are only pearls of inferior value, but tears of joy are pearls or diamonds of the first water.—Richter.
How many people I have seen who would have plucked cannon-balls out of the muzzles of guns with their bare hands, and yet had not courage enough to be happy.—Théophile Gautier.
All mankind are happier for having been happy, so that, if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.—Sydney Smith.
We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.—Lamotte.
I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount tofourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!—The Caliph Abdalrahman.
If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty),myhappy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present composition.—Gibbon.
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.—Pope.
We buy wisdom with happiness, and who would purchase it at such a price? To be happy we must forget the past, and think not of the future; and who that has a soul or mind can do this? No one; and this proves that those who have either know no happiness on this earth. Memory precludes happiness, whatever Rogers may say or write to the contrary, for it borrows from the past to embitter the present, bringing back to us all the grief that has most wounded, or the happiness that has most charmed us.—Byron.
The happiness you wot of is not a hundredth part of what you enjoy.—Charles Buxton.
Every human soul has the germ of some flowers within; and they would open if they could only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there is.—Mrs. L. M. Child.
Comparison, more than reality, makes men happy, and can make them wretched.—Feltham.
Happiness and misery are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not.—Locke.
There comes forever something between us and what we deem our happiness.—Byron.
Philosophical happiness is to want little; civil or vulgar happiness is to want much, and to enjoy much.—Burke.
How sad a sight is human happiness to those whose thoughts can pierce beyond an hour.—Young.
Plenteous joys, wanton in fullness.—Shakespeare.
Happiness is always the inaccessible castle which sinks in ruin when we set foot on it.—Arsène Houssaye.
For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so; happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which separately and of themselves have little value, but which united with art form a graceful design.—Mme. de Girardin.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.—George Eliot.
The way to bliss lies not on beds of down.—Quarles.
The use we make of happiness gives us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.—Rousseau.
Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.—J. Petit Senn.
In regard to the affairs of mortals, there is nothing happy throughout.—Euripides.
Hardship.—The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food,—it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.—George Eliot.
Haste.—Let your haste commend your duty.—Shakespeare.
The more haste ever the worst speed.—Churchill.
Hurry and cunning are the two apprentices of dispatch and skill; but neither of them ever learn their master's trade.—Colton.
All haste implies weakness.—George MacDonald.
Hatred.—We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.—Colton.
Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.—Beecher.
Love is rarely a hypocrite. But hate! how detect, and how guard against it. It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties whilst it favors its disguise; for civilization increases the number of contending interests, and refinement renders more susceptible to the least irritation the cuticle of self-love.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Hatred is like fire—it makes even light rubbish deadly.—George Eliot.
Health.—Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished, that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.—Thackeray.
Those hypochondriacs, who, like Herodius, give up their whole time and thoughts to the care of their health, sacrifice unto life every noble purpose of living; striving to support a frail and feverish being here, they neglect an hereafter; they continue to patch up and repair their mouldering tenement of clay, regardless of the immortal tenant that must survive it; agitated by greater fears than the Apostle, and supported by none of his hopes, they "die daily."—Colton.
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures, of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.—Johnson.
There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Heart.—The heart is like the tree that gives balm for the wounds of man only when the iron has pierced it.—Chauteaubriand.
The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.—Calderon.
There are treasures laid up in the heart,—treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world.—Buddhist Scriptures.
In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof!—Byron.
The hearts of pretty women are like bonbons, wrapped up in enigmas.—J. Petit Senn.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.—Dickens.
To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.—Bulwer-Lytton.
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.—Bossuet.
There are chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view.—Dickens.
A willing heart adds feathers to the heel, and makes the clown a winged Mercury.—Joanna Baillie.
Some people's hearts are shrunk in them like dried nuts. You can hear 'em rattle as they walk.—DouglasJerrold.
Heaven.—The love of heaven makes one heavenly.—Shakespeare.
Where is heaven? I cannot tell. Even to the eye of faith, heaven looks much like a star to the eye of flesh. Set there on the brow of night, it shines most bright, most beautiful; but it is separated from us by so great a distance as to be raised almost as high above our investigations as above the storms and clouds of earth.—Rev. Dr. Guthrie.
When at eve at the bounding of the landscape the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope,—a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.—Madame de Staël.
Few, without the hope of another life, would think it worth their while to live above the allurements of sense.—Atterbury.
Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought. David and Isaiah will sweep nobler and loftier strains in eternity, and the minds of the saints, unclogged by cumbersome clay, will forever feast on the banquet of rich and glorious thought.—Beecher.
Heroes.—A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.—Chesterfield.
In analyzing the character of heroes it is hardly possible to separate altogether the share of Fortune from their own.—Hallam.
Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.—George Eliot.
No one is a hero to his valet.—Madame de Sévigné.
History.—The Grecian history is a poem, Latin history a picture, modern history a chronicle.—Chauteaubriand.
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!—Coleridge.
History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.—Gibbon.
We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.—Johnson.
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.—Joubert.
To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult,—it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it; and in historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.—Froude.
The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror which merely reflects objects, but of the judge who sees, listens, and decides.—Lamartine.
In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.—Macaulay.
History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.—Washington Irving.
History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.—Macaulay.
Violent natures make history. The instruments they use almost always kill. Religion and philosophy have their vestments covered with innocent blood.—X. Doudan.
Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with immortality.—Bancroft.
What history is not richer, does not contain far more, than they by whom it is enacted, the present witnesses! What mortal understandeth his way?—Jacobi.
He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.—Macaulay.
Home.—Home is the grandest of all institutions.—Spurgeon.
The first sure symptom of a mind in health is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.—Young.
To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.—George Eliot.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.—Payne.
Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things; but don't scruple freedom in brightening home. Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are a sight day by day, and make life blither.—Charles Buxton.
Home is the seminary of all other institutions.—Chapin.
Honesty.—If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.—Johnson.
Persons lightly dipped, not grained, in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness.—Sir T. Browne.
Refined policy has ever been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.—Burke.
Money dishonestly acquired is never worth its cost, while a good conscience never costs as much as it is worth.—J. Petit Senn.
The honest man is a rare variety of the human species.—Chamfort.
Honor.—Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Hope.—Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.—Bulwer-Lytton.
"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year; "they are a sweet-smelling flower—a species of roses."—Hawthorne.
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.—Bacon.
The mighty hopes that make us men.—Tennyson.
Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health.—Cowley.
I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.—George Eliot.
Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret.—George Eliot.
Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of reveling to-day on the profits of to-morrow.—Johnson.
It is necessary to hope, though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.—Johnson.
Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.—Victor Hugo.
Humanity.—A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds: therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.—Bacon.
I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.—Burke.
Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.—Steele.
I do not know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men, but 'tis always a mortification to me to observe that there is no perfection in humanity.—Montagu.
The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Humility.—It is from out the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, God comes in, and is everything in me.—Mountford.
Should any ask me, What is the first thing in religion? I would reply, The first, second, and third thing therein, nay all, is humility.—St. Augustine.
Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."—Plutarch.
In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.—Franklin.
Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tigers' claws.—Heinrich Heine.
Trees that, like the poplar, lift upwards all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their bows.—Bulwer-Lytton.
If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little and others much.—Archbishop Leighton.
Humor.—The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.—Coleridge.
The oil and wine of merry meeting.—Washington Irving.
These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms.—Addison.
Hyperbole.—Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied with hyperbole.—Bruyère.
Let us have done with reproaching; for we may throw out so many reproachful words on one another that a ship of a hundred oars would not be able to carry the load.—Homer.
Hypocrisy.—Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God, presenting to him the outside, and reserving the inward for his enemy.—Jeremy Taylor.
Hypocrisy has become a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.—Molière.
Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal.—Swift.
Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy.—Mme. de Maintenon.
As a man loves gold, in that proportion he hates to be imposed upon by counterfeits; and in proportion as a man has regard for that which is above price and better than gold, he abhors that hypocrisy which is but its counterfeit.—Cecil.
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.—Milton.
Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man's hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still: that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.—Cowper.
I hate hypocrites, who put on their virtues with their white gloves.—Alfred de Musset.
Such a man will omit neither family worship, nor a sneer at his neighbor. He will neither milk his cows on the first day of the week without a Sabbath mask on his face, nor remove it while he waters the milk for his customers.—George Mac Donald.
The fatal fact in the case of a hypocrite is that he is a hypocrite.—Chapin.
'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to show himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie.—Montaigne.
Ideas.—After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.—George Eliot.
Our ideas are transformed sensations.—Condillac.
In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.—Heinrich Heine.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.—Holmes.
A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.—Taine.
Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.—X. Doudan.
We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.—Joubert.
Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.—Voltaire.
Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Idleness.—If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.—Sydney Smith.
Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.—Spurgeon.
In idleness there is perpetual despair.—Carlyle.
Doing nothing with a deal of skill.—Cowper.
From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.—Colton.
The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.—Dickens.
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.—Chesterfield.
So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.—Jeremy Taylor.
Let but the hours of idleness cease, and the bow of Cupid will become broken and his torch extinguished.—Ovid.
Ignorance.—Have thecourageto be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.—Sydney Smith.
There is no calamity like ignorance.—Richter.
'Tis sad work to be at that pass, that the best trial of truth must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceeds that of the wise. As if anything were so common as ignorance!—Montaigne.
Ignorance, which in behavior mitigates a fault, is, in literature, a capital offense.—Joubert.
There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fallbythe people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, orwiththem, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.—Coleridge.
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance.—Alcott.
The true instrument of man's degradation is his ignorance.—Lady Morgan.
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.—George Eliot.
The ignorant hath an eagle's wings and an owl's eyes.—George Herbert.
Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction.—Johnson.
Illusion.—In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.—Madame Swetchine.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.—Voltaire.
Imagination.—We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.—George Eliot.
A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.—Spurgeon.
He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.—Joubert.
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.—Johnson.
Imitation.—Imitators are a servile race.—Fontaine.
Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves.—Dr. Vinet.
"Name to me an animal, though never so skillful, that I cannot imitate!" So bragged the ape to the fox. But the fox replied, "And do thou name to me an animal so humble as to think of imitating thee."—Lessing.
Immortality.—When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising; I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal.—Cicero.
Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and consequently imperishable.—Aristotle.
The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod.—Milton.
All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.—Socrates.
What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.—Marcus Antoninus.
The seed dies into a new life, and so does man.—George MacDonald.
Impatience.—Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.—Jeremy Taylor.
Impossibility.—One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former onlywishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.—Democritus.
Improvement.—Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing. Advance with it.—Mazzini.
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.—Goldsmith.
Improvidence.—How full or how empty our lives, depends, we say, on Providence. Suppose we say, more or less on improvidence.—Bovée.
Income.—Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.—Colton.
Inconsistency.—Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none: their vows and promises are no more than words of course.—L'Estrange.
People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.—George Eliot.
Inconstancy.—The catching court disease.—Otway.
Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.—Addison.
Indifference.—Nothing for preserving the body like having no heart.—J. Petit Senn.
Indifference is the invincible giant of the world.—Ouida.
Indigestion.—Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a greatscene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food.—Sydney Smith.
Individuality.—There are men of convictions whose very faces will light up an era, and there are believing women in whose eyes you may almost read the whole plan of salvation.—T. Fields.
Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.—Richter.
The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.—Mazzini.
Indolence.—I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.—Chesterfield.
Lives spent in indolence, and therefore sad.—Cowper.
Days of respite are golden days.—South.
So long as he must fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth and slumber.—Charles Buxton.
Nothing ages like laziness.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Indulgence.—One wishes to be happy before becoming wise.—Mme. Necker.
Industry.—Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.—Addison.
Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest we must sow the seed.—Bailey.
Infidelity.—There is but one thing without honor; smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,—insincerity, unbelief. He who believes nothing, who believes only the shows of things, is not in relation with nature and fact at all.—Carlyle.
I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.—Richter.
If on one side there are fair proofs, and no pretense of proof on the other, and that the difficulties are more pressing on that side which is destitute of proof, I desire to know whether this be not upon the matter as satisfactory to a wise man as a demonstration.—Tillotson.
The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.—Cecil.
Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince profligates by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, and health, their infidelity would soon drop off.—Swift.
Infidelity gives nothing in return for what it takes away. What, then, is it worth? Everything valuable has a compensating power. Not a blade of grass that withers, or the ugliest weed that is flung away to rot and die, but reproduces something.—Dr. Chalmers.
Infirmities.—Never mind what a man's virtues are; waste no time in learning them. Fasten at once on his infirmities.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Influence.—He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but let him consecrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures.—Goethe.
If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.—George MacDonald.
The city reveals the moral ends of being, and sets the awful problem of life. The country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with religious suggestion.—Chapin.
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are, but they only pay with interest what they have received.—Macaulay.
In families well ordered there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Ingratitude.—The great bulk of mankind resemble the swine, which in harvest gather and fatten upon the acorns beneath the oak, but show to the tree which bore them no other thanks than rubbing off its bark, and tearing up the sod around it.—Scriver.
One great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of our Creator is the very extensiveness of his bounty.—Paley.
Injustice.—The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often his mercy.—Madame Swetchine.
Ink.—A drop of ink may make a million think.—Byron.
Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.—Shakespeare.
The colored slave that waits upon thought.—Mrs. Balfour.
Oh, she is fallen into a pit of ink, that the wide sea hath drops too few to wash her clean again!—Shakespeare.
My ways are as broad as the king's high road, and my means lie in an inkstand.—Southey.
Innocence.—He's armed without that's innocent within.—Pope.
There is no courage but in innocence.—Southern.
There is no man so good who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the law, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.—Montaigne.
Innovation.—The ridiculous rage for innovation, which only increases the weight of the chains it cannot break, shall never fire my blood!—Schiller.
Dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm.—Sydney Smith.
Insanity.—Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire; our ordinary life borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.—Taine.
Inspiration.—Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.—George Eliot.
Contagious enthusiasm.—Mrs. Balfour.
Instinct.—The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent.—Newton.
Instinct harmonizes the interior of animals as religion does the interior of men.—Jacobi.
All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.—Aimé Martin.
An instinct is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instruction.—Paley.
Insult.—It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society do you think it is taken as an insult?—Lady Hester Stanhope.
I once met a man who had forgiven an injury. I hope some day to meet the man who has forgiven an insult.—Charles Buxton.
Insurrection.—Insurrection unusually gains little; usually wastes how much! One of its worst kind of wastes, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and exasperating men against each other by violence done; which is always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even justice unjustly.—Carlyle.
Intellect.—The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbor; when the great merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Intelligence.—The higher feelings, when acting in harmonious combination, and directed by enlightened intellect, have a boundless scope for gratification; their least indulgence is delightful, and their highest activity is bliss.—Combe.
Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters.—Colton.
Light has spread, and even bayonets think.—Kossuth.
Intelligence is a luxury, sometimes useless, sometimes fatal. It is a torch or a fire-brand according to the use one makes of it.—Fernan Caballero.
Intemperance.—The body, overcharged with the excess of yesterday, weighs down the mind together with itself, and fixes to the earth that particle of the divine spirit.—Horace.
Intemperance is a great decayer of beauty.—Junius.
Intolerance.—Nothing dies so hard, and rallies so often, as intolerance.—Beecher.
Intolerance is the curse of every age and state.—Dr. Davies.
Invective.—Invective may be a sharp weapon, but over-use blunts its edge. Even when the denunciation is just and true, it is an error of art to indulge in it too long.—Tyndall.
Invention.—Invention is a kind of muse, which, being possessed of the other advantages common to her sisters, and being warmed by the fire of Apollo, is raised higher than the rest.—Dryden.
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can be made of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.—Sir J. Reynolds.
Irony.—Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Irresolution.—Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.—Feltham.
Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.—Addison.
Irresolute people let their soup grow cold between the plate and the mouth.—Cervantes.
Irritability.—Irritability urges us to take a step as much too soon as sloth does too late.—Cecil.
An irritable man lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, tormenting himself with his own prickles.—Hood.
Ivy.—The stateliest building man can raise is the ivy's food at last.—Dickens.
The ivy, like the spider, takes hold with her hands in king's palaces, as every twig is furnished with innumerable little fingers, by which it draws itself close, as it were, to the very heart of the old rough stone. Its clinging and beautiful tenacity has given rise to an abundance of conceits about fidelity, friendship, and woman's love, which have become commonplace simply from their appropriateness. It might also symbolize the higher love, unconquerable and unconquered, which has embraced this ruined world from age to age, silently spreading its green over the rents and fissures of our fallen nature.—Mrs. Stowe.
Jealousy.—What frenzy dictates, jealousy believes.—Gay.
Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, suspicions truths.—Cervantes.
'Tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself.—Shakespeare.
Women detest a jealous man whom they do not love, but it angers them when a man they do love is not jealous.—Ninon de L'Enclos.
A jealous man always finds more than he looks for.—Mlle. de Scudéry.
Jealousy is the sister of love, as the devil is the brother of angels.—Boufflers.
Jesting.—Jests—Brain fleas that jump about among the slumbering ideas.—Heinrich Heine.
The jest loses its point when the wit is the first to laugh.—Schiller.
And generally, men ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of other's memory.—Bacon.
Jewelry.—Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous.—Douglas Jerrold.
Jews.—Talk what you will of the Jews; that they are cursed: they thrive wherever they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and as for their being hated, why Christians hate one another as much.—Selden.
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the Pyramids.—Lamb.
Joy.—The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy.—Pope.
Worldly joy is like the songs which peasants sing, full of melodies and sweet airs.—Beecher.
Redundant joy, like a poor miser, beggar'd by his store.—Young.
We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Joy is the best of wine.—George Eliot.
Joy in this world is like a rainbow, which in the morning only appears in the west, or towards the evening sky; but in the latter hours of day casts its triumphal arch over the east, or morning sky.—Richter.
Judgment.—The more one judges, the less one loves.—Balzac.
I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.—Wellington.
Judgment and reason have been grand jurymen since before Noah was a sailor.—Shakespeare.
A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.—Goethe.
In judging of others a man laboreth in vain, often erreth, and easily sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboreth fruitfully.—Thomas à Kempis.
I have seen, when after execution judgment hath repented o'er his doom.—Shakespeare.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice, but an accident alone, here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death!—Carlyle.
Human judgment, like Luther's drunken peasant, when saved from falling on one side, topples over on the other.—Mazzini.
The contemporary mind may in rare cases be taken by storm; but posterity never. The tribunal of the present is accessible to influence; that of the future is incorrupt.—Gladstone.
Upon any given point, contradictory evidence seldom puzzles the man who has mastered the laws of evidence, but he knows little of the laws of evidence who has not studied the unwritten law of the human heart; and without this last knowledge a man of action will not attain to the practical, nor will a poet achieve the ideal.—Bulwer-Lytton.
How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.—Southey.
Justice.—It is the pleasure of the gods—that what is in conformity with justice shall also be in conformity to the laws.—Socrates.
Justice delayed is justice denied.—Gladstone.
Justice advances with such languid steps that crime often escapes from its slowness. Its tardy and doubtful course causes too many tears to be shed.—Corneille.
Justice is truth in action.—Joubert.
At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.—Pope.
Strike if you will, but hear.—Themistocles.
When Infinite Wisdom established the rule of right and honesty, He saw to it that justice should be always the highest expediency.—Wendell Phillips.
But Justice shines in smoky cottages, and honors the pious. Leaving with averted eyes the gorgeous glare obtained by polluted hands, she is wont to draw nigh to holiness, not reverencing wealth when falsely stamped with praise, and assigning each deed its righteous doom.—Æschylus.
God's mill grinds slow but sure.—George Herbert.
Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, and say, "It is there?" Justice is like the kingdom of God—it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.—George Eliot.
Justice claims what is due, polity what is seemly; justice weighs and decides, polity surveys and orders; justice refers to the individual, polity to the community.—Goethe.