Kindness.—Yes! you may find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and twopence.—Sydney Smith.
Paradise is open to all kind hearts.—Béranger.
Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.—Pascal.
To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.—Johnson.
To remind a man of a kindness conferred is little less than a reproach.—Demosthenes.
Kindness is the only charm permitted to the aged; it is the coquetry of white hair.—O. Feuillet.
Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.—Mme. de Staël.
Kings.—Kings wish to be absolute, and they are sometimes told that their best way to become so is to make themselves beloved by the people. This maxim is doubtless a very admirable one, and in some respects true; but unhappily it is laughed at in court.—Rousseau.
Implements of war and subjugation are the last arguments to which kings resort.—Patrick Henry.
A king ought not fall from the throne except with the throne itself; under its lofty ruins he alone finds an honored death and an honored tomb.—Alfieri.
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is, that nature disapproves it; otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass in place of a lion.—Thomas Paine.
He on whom Heaven confers a sceptre knows not the weight till he bears it.—Corneille.
Kings' titles commonly begin by force which time wears off, and mellows into right; and power which in one age is tyranny is ripened in the next to true succession.—Dryden.
Kisses.—It is as old as the creation, and yet as young and fresh as ever. It preëxisted, still exists, and always will exist. Depend upon it, Eve learned it in Paradise, and was taught its beauties, virtues, and varieties by an angel, there is something so transcendent in it.—Haliburton.
Dear as remembered kisses after death.—Tennyson.
Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I'll not look for wine.—Ben Jonson.
He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man's usual fate—he was lost upon the coral reefs.—Douglas Jerrold.
Eden revives in the first kiss of love.—Byron.
You would think that, if our lips were made of horn, and stuck out a foot or two from our faces, kisses at any rate would be done for. Not so. No creatures kiss each other so much as birds.—Charles Buxton.
That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.—George Eliot.
Stolen kisses are always sweetest.—Leigh Hunt.
Sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection,—these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.—Bovée.
Knavery.—Unluckily the credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. Theynever give people possession; but they always keep them in hope.—Burke.
After long experience in the world I affirm, before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy.—Junius.
By fools knaves fatten; by bigots priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.—Zimmerman.
Knowledge.—The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.—G. W. Curtis.
Knowledge, like religion, must be "experienced," in order to be known.—Whipple.
The pleasure and delight of knowledge far surpasseth all other in nature. We see in all other pleasures there is satiety; and after they be used, their verdure departeth, which showeth well that they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable.—Bacon.
What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?—George Eliot.
The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.—Sydney Smith.
He who knows much has much to care for.—Lessing.
Properly, there is no other knowledge but that which is got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools; a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try and fix it.—Carlyle.
He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Bible.
To know by rote is no knowledge; it is only a retention of what is intrusted to the memory. That which a man truly knows may be disposed of without regard to the author, or reference to the book from whence he had it.—Montaigne.
He who cherishes his old knowledge, so as continually to acquire new, he may be a teacher of others.—Confucius.
A taste of every sort of knowledge is necessary to form the mind, and is the only way to give the understanding its due improvement to the full extent of its capacity.—Locke.
Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is triumphing, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.—Daniel Webster.
Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.—Tyndall.
The shortest and the surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to remount to first principles, and take nobody's word about them.—Bolingbroke.
Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth; the tree of knowledge is not that of life.—Byron.
The seeds of knowledge maybe planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.—Johnson.
Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.—Cowper.
It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means; all its attainments helps to new conquests.—Daniel Webster.
The love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the infirm excitement of passions and vices.—Beecher.
There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.—Johnson.
We always know everything when it serves no purpose, and when the seal of the irreparable has been set upon events.—Théophile Gautier.
All the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of humanity.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Labor.—Labor is the divine law of our existence; repose is desertion and suicide.—Mazzini.
Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!—Carlyle.
The fact is nothing comes; at least nothing good. All has to be fetched.—Charles Buxton.
Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them.—Joubert.
As steady application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.—Samuel Smiles.
Nature is just towards men. It recompenses them for their sufferings; it renders them laborious, because to the greatest toils it attaches the greatest rewards.—Montesquieu.
Virtue's guard is Labor, ease her sleep.—Tasso.
Alexander the Great, reflecting on his friends degenerating into sloth and luxury, told them that it was a most slavish thing to luxuriate, and a most royal thing to labor.—Barrow.
Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael.—Goethe.
He that thinks that diversion may not lie in hard labor forgets the early rising and hard riding of huntsmen.—Locke.
The pain of life but sweetens death; the hardest labor brings the soundest sleep.—Albert Smith.
What men want is not talent, it is purpose; not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.—Bulwer-Lytton.
The true epic of our times is not "arms and the man," but "tools and the man," an infinitely wider kind of epic.—Carlyle.
Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionably brutified!—Hawthorne.
Land.—There is a distinct joy in owning land, unlike that which you have in money, in houses, in books, pictures, or anything else which men have devised. Personal property brings you into society with men. But land is a part of God's estate in theglobe; and when a parcel of ground is deeded to you, and you walk over it, and call it your own, it seems as if you had come into partnership with the original Proprietor of the earth.—Beecher.
Language.—The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother.—Bulwer-Lytton.
The key to the sciences.—Bruyère.
A countryman is as warm in fustian as a king in velvet, and a truth is as comfortable in homely language as in fine speech. As to the way of dishing up the meat, hungry men leave that to the cook, only let the meat be sweet and substantial.—Spurgeon.
The machine of the poet.—Macaulay.
Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.—Johnson.
Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee: it springs out of the most retired and inmost part of us.—Ben Jonson.
If the way in which men express their thoughts is slipshod and mean, it will be very difficult for their thoughts themselves to escape being the same. If it is high flown and bombastic, a character for national simplicity and thankfulness cannot long be maintained.—Dean Alford.
Laughter.—Conversation never sits easier than when we now and then discharge ourselves ina symphony of laughter; which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.—Steele.
The laughers are a majority.—Pope.
Learn from the earliest days to inure your principles against the perils of ridicule: you can no more exercise your reason, if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life if you are in the constant terror of death.—Sydney Smith.
How much lies in laughter: the cipher key, wherewith we decipher the whole man!—Carlyle.
God made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness.—Leigh Hunt.
How inevitably does an immoderate laughter end in a sigh!—South.
Laughing, if loud, ends in a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face.—Jeremy Taylor.
Laughter means sympathy.—Carlyle.
One good, hearty laugh is a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who shoots it off.—De Witt Talmage.
I am sure that since I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me laugh.—Chesterfield.
I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, that shower at the same time pearls and the soul.—Victor Hugo.
Laughter is a most healthful exertion; it is one of the greatest helps to digestion with which I am acquainted; and the custom prevalent among our forefathers, of exciting it at table by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true medical principles.—Dr. Hufeland.
Law.—With us, law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste paper, lacking all executive force.—Wendell Phillips.
Of all the parts of a law, the most effectual is thevindicatory; for it is but lost labor to say, "Do this, or avoid that," unless we also declare, "This shall be the consequence of your non-compliance." The main strength and force of a law consists in the penalty annexed to it.—Blackstone.
If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.—Ruskin.
It would be very singular if this great shad-net of the law did not enable men to catch at something, balking for the time the eternal flood-tide of justice.—Chapin.
True law is right reason conformably to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil.—Cicero.
Aristotle himself has said, speaking of the laws of his own country, that jurisprudence, or the knowledge of those laws, is the principal and most perfect branch of ethics.—Blackstone.
In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination, to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislation.—Burke.
In the habits of legal men every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny. It is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.—Lamartine.
Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.—Shakespeare.
It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.—Bolingbroke.
A mouse-trap; easy to enter but not easy to get out of.—Mrs Balfour.
What can idle laws do with morals?—Horace.
The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Learning.—It adds a precious seeing to the eye.—Shakespeare.
You are to consider that learning is of great use to society; and though it may not add to the stock, it is a necessary vehicle to transmit it to others. Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountain-heads.—James Northcote.
Learning makes a man fit company for himself.—Young.
Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.—Cicero.
The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.—Johnson.
No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.—Thomas à Kempis.
Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless commodity, but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most of the great fortunes in the kingdom.—Fielding.
For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training is a much greater misfortune.—Plato.
No power can exterminate the seeds of liberty when it has germinated in the blood of brave men. Our religion of to-day is still that of martyrdom; to-morrow it will be the religion of victory.—Mazzini.
Leisure.—"Never less idle than when idle," was the motto which the admirable Vittoria Colonna wrought upon her husband's dressing-gown. And may we not justly regard our appreciation of leisure as a test of improved character and growing resources?—Tuckerman.
Leisure is gone; gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.—George Eliot.
Libels.—Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property. Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all valuable. The law forbids you to revenge; when it ties up the hands of some, it ought to restrain the tongues of others.—Burke.
If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.—Balzac.
Liberty.—Liberty is the right to do what the laws allow; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, it would be no longer liberty, because others would have the same powers.—Montesquieu.
If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.—Daniel Webster.
Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.—Washington.
Library.—A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.—Seneca.
He has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world, and the glories of a modern one.—Longfellow.
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.—Lamb.
Life.—Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the pieces are sweptback into the box—black box with the gilded nails!—Bulwer-Lytton.
We never live, but we ever hope to live.—Pascal.
Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies, and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived—to reach a desert waste.—G. A. Sala.
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.—Colton.
The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four-score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.—Bible.
When I reflect upon what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; and I look on what has passed as one of those wild dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive illusion.—Chesterfield.
Life is like a game of whist. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.—George Eliot.
He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best; and he whose heart beats the quickest lives the longest.—James Martineau.
Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistledown.—George Eliot.
When we embark in the dangerous ship called Life, we must not, like Ulysses, be tied to the mast; we must know how to listen to the songs of the sirens and to brave their blandishments.—Arsène Houssaye.
Life is thick sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.—Voltaire.
The earnestness of life is the only passport to the satisfaction of life.—Theodore Parker.
I am convinced that there is no man that knows life well, and remembers all the incidents of his past existence, who would accept it again; we are certainly here to punish precedent sins.—Campbell.
The childhood of immortality.—Goethe.
So our lives glide on; the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.—George Eliot.
We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.—L'Estrange.
This tide of man's life after it once turneth and declineth ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again.—Sir W. Raleigh.
If the first death be the mistress of mortals, and the mistress of the universe, reflect then on the brevity of life. "I have been, and that is all," said Saladin the Great, who was conqueror of the East. The longest liver had but a handful of days, and life itself is but a circle, always beginning where it ends.—Henry Mayhew.
Why all this toil for the triumphs of an hour?—Young.
The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh.—Prior.
Life's short summer—man is but a flower.—Johnson.
Man lives only to shiver and perspire.—Sydney Smith.
O frail estate of human things!—Dryden.
Many think themselves to be truly God-fearing when they call this world a valley of tears. But I believe they would be more so, if they called it a happy valley. God is more pleased with those who think everything right in the world, than with those who think nothing right. With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?—Richter.
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.—Johnson.
We never live: we are always in the expectation of living.—Voltaire.
Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun.—Augusta Evans.
Light.—Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun sends into our windows, which he pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.—Dr. Channing.
More light!—Goethe's last words.
Light! Nature's resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom.—Thomson.
Hail! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born!—Milton.
We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch, by which we might behold his works.—Caussin.
Likeness.—Like, but oh, how different!—Wordsworth.
Lips.—Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow.—Bailey.
He kissed me hard, as though he'd pluck up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips.—Shakespeare.
The lips of a fool swallow up himself.—Bible.
Literature.—Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done.—Froude.
The literature of a people must spring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.—Mrs. Stowe.
Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor.—Coleridge.
When literature is the sole business of life, it becomes a drudgery. When we are able to resort to it only at certain hours, it is a charming relaxation. In my earlier days I was a banker's clerk, obliged to be at the desk everyday from ten till five o'clock; and I shall never forget the delight with which, on returning home, I used to read and write during the evening.—Rogers.
Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.—Heinrich Heine.
Whatever the skill of any country be in sciences, it is from excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.—Goldsmith.
Logic.—Logic differeth from rhetoric as the fist from the palm; the one close, the other at large.—Bacon.
Syllogism is of necessary use, even to the lovers of truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or involved discourses.—Locke.
Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth.—Bruyère.
Love.—Fie, fie! how wayward is this foolish love, that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse, and presently, all humbled, will kiss the rod!—Shakespeare.
Love is the cross and passion of the heart; its end, its errand.—P. L. Bailey.
Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.—George Eliot.
Love while 't is day; night cometh soon, wherein no man or maiden may.—Joaquin Miller.
Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.—George Eliot.
As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.—Shakespeare.
Loves change sure as man or moon, and wane like warm full days of June.—Joaquin Miller.
Take of love as a sober man takes wine; do not get drunk.—Alfred de Musset.
Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. The qualities of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. Can it be true, what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls? I doubt it—I doubt it exceedingly.—Coleridge.
As love increases prudence diminishes.—Rochefoucauld.
Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.—Emerson.
The desire to be beloved is ever restless and unsatisfied; but the love that flows out upon others is a perpetual well-spring from on high.—L. M. Child.
Love is love's reward.—Dryden.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it is durable, it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain be.—Thoreau.
Love makes all things possible.—Shakespeare.
Economy in love is peace to nature, much like economy in worldly matters; we should be prudent, never love too fast; profusion will not, cannot, always last.—Peter Pindar.(John W. Wolcott.)
There is no fear in love, for perfect love casteth out fear.—Bible.
O love! thy essence is thy purity! Breathe one unhallowed breath upon thy flame and it is gone for ever, and but leaves a sullied vase,—its pure light lost in shame.—Landor.
The pale complexion of true love.—Shakespeare.
Love has no middle term; it either saves or destroys.—Victor Hugo.
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.—Beecher.
In love's war, he who flies is conqueror.—Mrs. Osgood.
Where there is room in the heart there is always room in the house.—Moore.
Love's like the measles, all the worse when it comes late in life.—Douglas Jerrold.
Only they conquer love who run away.—Carew.
The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye.—L. E. Landon.
Love, well thou know'st, no partnership allows; cupid averse rejects divided vows.—Prior.
Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.—Milton.
Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking.—Schlegel.
The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.—Antoine Bret.
I have enjoyed the happiness of this world, I have lived and have loved.—Richter.
Life is a flower of which love is the honey.—Victor Hugo.
Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more than love.—Thoreau.
Young love-making, that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to—the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung—are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.—George Eliot.
Love is the loadstone of love.—Mrs. Osgood.
Love is never lasting which flames before it burns.—Feltham.
The best part of woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses, too, that were let fall ready to soothe the wearied feet.—George Eliot.
Love is an Oriental despot.—Madame Swetchine.
We must love as looking one day to hate.—George Herbert.
Love with old men is as the sun upon the snow, it dazzles more than it warms them.—J. Petit Senn.
Love is lowliness; on the wedding ring sparkles no jewel.—Richter.
Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power; and where love seems to fail, it is where self has stepped between and dulled the potency of its rays.—George MacDonald.
To speak of love is to make love.—Balzac.
A man may be a miser of his wealth; he may tie up his talent in a napkin; he may hug himself in his reputation; but he is always generous in his love. Love cannot stay at home; a man cannot keep it to himself. Like light, it is constantly traveling. A man must spend it, must give it away.—Macleod.
Repining love is the stillest; the shady flowers in this spring as in the other, shun sunlight.—Richter.
Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases.—Ségur.
Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous of the passions: it is the only one that includes in its dreams the happiness of some one else.—Alphonse Karr.
A woman whom we truly love is a religion.—Emile de Girardin.
Childhood is only a wearisome prologue: the first act of the human comedy opens only at the moment when love makes a breach in our hearts.—Arsène Houssaye.
The religion of humanity is love.—Mazzini.
He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night, but he who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will not recover his senses until the day of judgment.—Saadi.
Love reasons without reason.—Shakespeare.
It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, we say spring has come.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Love and a cough cannot be hid.—George Herbert.
Love is the most dunder-headed of all the passions; it never will listen to reason. The very rudiments of logic are unknown to it. "Love has no wherefore," says one of the Latin poets.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end.—Alphonse Karr.
One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death.—Voltaire.
The heart of a woman is never so full of affection that there does not remain a little corner for flattery and love.—Mauvaux.
Love is always blind and tears his hands whenever he tries to gather roses.—Arsène Houssaye.
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.—Voltaire.
Oh! I was mad to intoxicate myself with the wine of love, and to extend my hand to the crown of poets. Pleasure! Poetry! you are perfidious friends. Pain follows you closely.—Arsène Houssaye.
If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits.—Alphonse Karr.
In love, as in everything else, experience is a physician who never comes until after the disorder is cured.—Mme. de la Tour.
One expresses well only the love he does not feel.—Alphonse Karr.
In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken.—Marguerite de Valois.
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness.—George Eliot.
To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, in a word, to be the idol of one's idol, is exceeding the limit of human joy; it is stealing fire from heaven and deserves death.—Madame de Girardin.
But to enlarge or illustrate this power and effects of love is to set a candle in the sun.—Burton.
There are as many kinds of love as there are races. A great tall German, learned, virtuous, phlegmatic, said one day: "Souls are sisters, fallen from heaven, who all at once recognize and run to meet each other." A little dry Frenchman, hot-blooded, witty, lively, replied to him: "You are right; you can always find shoes to fit."—Taine.
Love supreme defies all sophistry.—George Eliot.
It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.—Thoreau.
The love of man to woman is a thing common, and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.—Plato.
We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.—George Eliot.
Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied.—Southey.
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.—George Eliot.
Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the humblest professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what keenness of observation is born under the influence of that feeling which drives away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun consumes the vapor of the morning.—Tuckerman.
Luck.—Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Luxury.—Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.—John Adams.
He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.—Quarles.
O brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.—Spurgeon.
O Luxury! Thou curst of heaven's decree.—Goldsmith.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.—Shakespeare.
Lying.—Lying's a certain mark of cowardice.—Southern.
There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.—Pascal.
Every brave man shuns more than death the shame of lying.—Corneille.
It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm.—Washington Allston.
Lies exist only to be extinguished.—Carlyle.
A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.—Tennyson.
Madness.—Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the oppositeway, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.—Johnson.
Man.—It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.—Pascal.
Man, I tell you, is a vicious animal.—Molière.
He is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims,—with immortal longings,—with thoughts which sweep the heavens, and wander through eternity. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.—Carlyle.
Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much obscurity.—Victor Hugo.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and movement, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!—Shakespeare.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!—Emerson.
In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.—Walpole.
Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.—Alexander Hamilton.
I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command!—Burke.
Men's natures are neither white nor black, but brown.—Charles Buxton.
He is compounded of two very different ingredients, spirit and matter; but how such unallied and disproportioned substances should act upon each other, no man's learning yet could tell him.—Jeremy Collier.
Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope, the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at.—Theodore Parker.
Men are but children of a larger growth; our appetites are apt to change as theirs, and full as craving, too, and full as vain.—Dryden.
Little things are great to little men.—Goldsmith.
Man himself is the crowning wonder of creation; the study of his nature the noblest study the world affords.—Gladstone.
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires.—Lamartine.
Manners.—A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.—Beecher.
All manners take a tincture from our own.—Pope.
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.—Emerson.
We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness.—George Eliot.
We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly.—Voltaire.
Nature is the best posture-master.—Emerson.
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.—Johnson.
Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.—Feltham.
The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure.—Emerson.
We are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.—South.
Better were it to be unborn than to be ill-bred.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.—Jeffrey.
Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze.—Balzac.
Comport thyself in life as at a banquet. If a plate is offered thee, extend thy hand and take it moderately; if it be withdrawn, do not detain it. If it come not to thy side, make not thy desire loudly known, but wait patiently till it be offered thee.—Epictetus.
Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and firm allies.—Bartol.
The "over-formal" often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.—Whately.
Martyrs.—Even in this world they will have their judgment-day, and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight of nations.—Mrs. Stowe.
It is not the death that makes the martyr, but the cause.—Canon Dale.
It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.—Lamartine.
God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing.—Addison.
Matrimony.—When a man and woman are married their romance ceases and their history commences.—Rochebrune.
It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.—S. Smith.
Married in haste, we repent at leisure.—Congreve.
I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.—Johnson.
Hanging and wiving go by destiny.—Shakespeare.
The married man is like the bee that fixes his hive, augments the world, benefits the republic, and by a daily diligence, without wronging any, profits all; but he who contemns wedlock, like a wasp, wanders an offence to the world, lives upon spoil and rapine, disturbs peace, steals sweets that are none of his own, and, by robbing the hives of others, meets misery as his due reward.—Feltham.
One can, with dignity, be wife and widow but once.—Joubert.
Few natures can preserve through years the poetry of the first passionate illusion. That can alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial that consecrates its grave.—Bulwer-Lytton.
It's hard to wive and thrive both in a year.—Tennyson.
Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.—Shakespeare.
Wedlock's like wine, not properly judged of till the second glass.—Douglas Jerrold.
A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.—Johnson.
He that marries is like the Doge who was wedded to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries: mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him.—Heinrich Heine.
A husband is a plaster that cures all the ills of girlhood.—Molière.
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.—Thoreau.
The love of some men for their wives is like that of Alfieri for his horse. "My attachment for him," said he, "went so far as to destroy my peace every time that he had the least ailment; but my love for him did not prevent me from fretting and chafing him whenever he did not wish to go my way."—Bovée.
No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea.—Balzac.
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?—George Eliot.
Mediocrity.—Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.—Joubert.
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.—Gladstone.
Meditation.—Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.—Shakespeare.
'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, and ask them what report they bore to heaven, and how they might have borne more welcome news.—Young.
Meditation is that exercise of the mind by which it recalls a known truth, as some kind of creatures do their food, to be ruminated upon till all vicious parts be extracted.—Bishop Horne.
Meekness.—The flower of meekness grows on a stem of grace.—J. Montgomery.
A boy was once asked what meekness was. He thought for a moment and said, "Meekness gives smooth answers to rough questions."—Mrs. Balfour.
Melancholy.—Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth?—Byron.
A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind.—Dryden.
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy.—Milton.
The noontide sun is dark, and music discord, when the heart is low.—Young.
Memory.—Memory is what makes us young or old.—Alfred de Musset.
No canvas absorbs color like memory.—Willmott.
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.—Colton.
Joy's recollection is no longer joy; but sorrow's memory is sorrow still.—Byron.
A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble.—L. E. Landon.
And fondly mourn the dear delusions gone.—Prior.
How can such deep-imprinted images sleep in us at times, till a word, a sound, awake them?—Lessing.
In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention; it is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.—Willmott.
Memory is the scribe of the soul.—Aristotle.
The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.—George Eliot.
We must always have old memories and young hopes.—Arsène Houssaye.
They teach us to remember; why do not they teach us to forget? There is not a man living who has not, some time in his life, admitted that memory was as much of a curse as a blessing.—F. A. Durivage.
Mercy.—Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice!—Longfellow.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.—Shakespeare.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.—Shakespeare.
Give money, but never lend it. Giving it only makes a man ungrateful; lending it makes him an enemy.—Dumas.
Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,—not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment-seat.—Chapin.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.—George Eliot.
Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.—Cervantes.
Milton.—His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.—Macaulay.
Mind.—It is with diseases of the mind as with diseases of the body, we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.—Colton.
The end which at present calls forth our efforts will be found when it is once gained to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.—Johnson.
Minds filled with vivid, imaginative thoughts, are the most indolent in reproducing. Clear, cold, hard minds are productive. They have to retrace a very simple design.—X. Doudan.
The mind is the atmosphere of the soul.—Joubert.
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?—Prior.
Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a kind of famine for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt sick sailor's call for a lemon or raw potato.—Holmes.
The best way to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency of the water.—Pope.
A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Mischief.—The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.—Voltaire.
Miser.—The miser swimming in gold seems to me like a thirsty fish.—J. Petit Senn.
In all meanness there is a deficit of intellect as well as of heart, and even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Misery.—There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.—Holmes.
Misery is so little appertaining to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we in the same degree of illusion only lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us.—Richter.
Misfortune.—If all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by such a division.—Socrates.
Depend upon it, that if a mantalksof his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery, there never is any recourse to the mention of it.—Johnson.
Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. Beauteous soul! when a storm approaches thee be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.—Richter.
Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.—Alcott.
There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.—George Eliot.
Men shut their doors against the setting sun.—Shakespeare.
He that is down needs fear no fall.—Bunyan.
Moderation.—Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a Northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy.—Macaulay.
The superior man wishes to be slow in his words, and earnest in his conduct.—Confucius.
Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion; as if the short spring days were an eternity.—Thoreau.
It is a little stream which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.—Madame Swetchine.
Modesty.—False modesty is the last refinement of vanity. It is a lie.—Bruyère.
The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish Modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.—Addison.
He of his port was meek as is a maid.—Chaucer.
Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.—Hazlitt.
Modesty, who, when she goes, is gone forever.—Landor.
Modesty is the conscience of the body.—Balzac.
There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.—Taine.
Virtue which shuns the day.—Addison.
Modesty and the dew love the shade. Each shine in the open day only to be exhaled to heaven.—J. Petit Senn.
Modesty is still a provocation.—Poincelot.
Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity of noble souls.—E. de Girardin.
Money.—Wisdom, knowledge, power—all combined.—Byron.
Oh, what a world of vile ill-favored faults looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!—Shakespeare.
It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money.—Hawthorne.
If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.—Franklin.
Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.—Wesley.
The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labor, which is best encouraged by the love of money.—Sydney Smith.
Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.—Byron.
Money does all things; for it gives and it takes away, it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers; and so forward,mutatis mutandis, to the end of the chapter.—L'Estrange.
Mammon is the largest slave-holder in the world.—Fred. Saunders.