But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms.—George MacDonald.
Money, the life-blood of the nation.—Swift.
Moon.—The silver empress of the night.—Tickell.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.—Shakespeare.
Mysterious veil of brightness made.—Butler.
Cynthia, fair regent of the night.—Gay.
The maiden moon in her mantle of blue.—Joaquin Miller.
Morals.—Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.—Macaulay.
We like the expression of Raphael's faces without an edict to enforce it. I do not see why there should not be a taste in morals formed on the same principle.—Hazlitt.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.—Thoreau.
Morning.—Vanished night, shot through with orient beams.—Milton.
The dewy morn, with breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom.—Byron.
Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top.—Shakespeare.
When the glad sun, exulting in his might, comes from the dusky-curtained tents of night.—Emma C. Embury.
The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day.—Shakespeare.
Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds.—Calderon.
Temperate as the morn.—Shakespeare.
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Mother.—Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.—Macaulay.
Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother.—Bulwer-Lytton.
I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had not been for one thing, the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caused me to repeat the Lord's Prayer.—Thomas Randolph.
The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man.—George Eliot.
When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother,—mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman.—Luther.
There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart.—Hemans.
Motive.—The morality of an action depends upon the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but with respect to me, the action is very wrong.—Johnson.
Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning.—Chapin.
Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.—Kreeshna.
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.—George Eliot.
Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, every labor enjoyment.—Jacobi.
Mourning.—Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!—Tennyson.
The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews.—Thomson.
Music.—Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune.—Lamb.
All musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion.—Sydney Smith.
Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.—Mrs. Stowe.
There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say that music is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of space.—Heinrich Heine.
The hidden soul of harmony.—Milton.
Give me some music! music, moody food of us that trade in love.—Shakespeare.
Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse.—Tuckerman.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.—Milton.
Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.—Goethe.
Music, which gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.—Tennyson.
Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.—George Eliot.
Music can noble hints impart, engender fury, kindle love, with unsuspected eloquence can move and manage all the man with secret art.—Addison.
Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world; one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound.—Mazzini.
Naïveté.—Naïveté is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is not natural.—Mendelssohn.
Name.—A virtuous name is the precious only good for which queens and peasants' wives must contest together.—Schiller.
A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.—Goethe.
Napoleon.—Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones.—Byron.
Napoleon I. might have been the Washington of France; he preferred to be another Attila,—a question of taste.—F. A. Durivage.
Nature.—Nature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her.—Bacon.
Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature.—De Finod.
Nature,—a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks ineverywhere.—Emerson.
Nature is poetic, but not mankind. When one aims at truth it is easier to find the poetic side of nature than of man.—X. Doudan.
All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.—Chapin.
Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.—Emerson.
Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit: a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,—the root, the branch, the fruits,—the principles, the consequences.—Pascal.
A noble nature can alone attract the noble, and alone knows how to retain them.—Goethe.
Nature, the vicar of the almighty Lord.—Chaucer.
A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.—Coleridge.
We, by art, unteach what Nature taught.—Dryden.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.—Alcott.
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.—Emerson.
Nature is an absolute and jealous divinity. Lovely, eloquent, and instructive in all her inequalities and contrasts, she hides her face, and remains mute to those who, by attempting to re-fashion her, profane her.—Mazzini.
Necessity.—Necessity is a bad recommendation to favors of any kind, which as seldom fall to those who really want them, as to those who really deserve them.—Fielding.
It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.—Johnson.
When God would educate a man He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation.—Celia Burleigh.
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.—Joubert.
What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.—Tennyson.
Neglect.—He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.—Johnson.
News.—Give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.—Shakespeare.
Newspapers.—In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.—Heinrich Heine.
Before this century shall run out journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth; it will spread from Pole to Pole, suddenly burning with the fervor of soul which made it burst forth; it will be the reign of the human mind in all its plenitude; it will not have time to ripen, to accumulate in the form of a book; the book will arrive too late; the only book possible from day to day is a newspaper.—Lamartine.
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.—Napoleon.
They preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war with an authority which only the first Reformers and a long-past class of Popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the discipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition the new preachers somewhat resemble the mendicant Friars of old times; outwardly, full of holy zeal; inwardly, not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things.—Carlyle.
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.—Johnson.
Night.—Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.—Mrs. Barbauld.
The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night.—Longfellow.
Sable-vested night, eldest of things.—Milton.
O mysterious night! Thou art not silent: many tongues hast thou.—Joanna Baillie.
Night, when deep sleep falleth on men.—Bible.
No.—No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at once.—Walter Scott.
Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.—Spurgeon.
The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No. She who explains wants to be convinced.—Alfred de Musset.
Nobility.—Virtue is the first title of nobility.—Molière.
Nonsense.—Nonsense is to sense as shade to light—it heightens effect.—Fred. Saunders.
Nothing.—There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account.—Fontaine.
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.—Richter.
Novels.—Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men,—Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians,—are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.—Thackeray.
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.—Balzac.
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.—Swift.
Novelty.—The enormous influence of novelty—the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment—is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you drink after it?" The two points of practical wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as as much possible, the sources of novelty.—Ruskin.
Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure.—South.
Obedience.—To obey is better than sacrifice.—Bible.
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice, it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience.—George Eliot.
Oblivion.—Oblivion is the flower that grows best on graves.—George Sand.
The grave of human misery.—Alfred de Musset.
Observation.—It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men,—the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.—Samuel Smiles.
Observation made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over fearful of a little dust.—Colton.
Each one sees what he carries in his heart.—Goethe.
Occupation.—The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.—Rousseau.
The busy have no time for tears.—Byron.
One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman.—Lacretelle.
Ocean.—Wave rolling after wave in torrent rapture.—Milton.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies.—Barry Cornwall.
The visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads.—Shakespeare.
Office.—The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors.—Walpole.
Opinion.—The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.—Heinrich Heine.
Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.—Socrates.
Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed?—George Eliot.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.—Joubert.
It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.—Colton.
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.—Montaigne.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.—Voltaire.
If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.—Swift.
One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy.—Burton.
It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won.—Goethe.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.—Mme. Roland.
Opportunity.—The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.—Vieland.
Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves.—Rochefoucauld.
What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.—George Eliot.
There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window.—Cardinal Imperiali.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.—George Eliot.
Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.—Jeremy Collier.
A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity."—Moore.
Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.—Lord Stanley.
You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.—Charles Buxton.
Opposition.—The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat,—men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority—demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice—comes graceful and beloved as a bride!—Emerson.
Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Oratory.—Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.—Cicero.
Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a positive pleasure in catching resemblances for themselves.—Aristotle.
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.—Colton.
An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.—Theophrastus.
When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"—Colton.
Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.—Henry Clay.
It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client!—Goldsmith.
Originality.—Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.—Voltaire.
One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.—George Eliot.
The most original writers borrowed one from another. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto Boiardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.—Voltaire.
All originality is estrangement.—G. H. Lawes.
Pain.—Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical, and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.—Heinrich Heine.
The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Pardon.—Pardon is the virtue of victory.—Mazzini.
The heart has always the pardoning power.—Madame Swetchine.
The offender never pardons.—George Herbert.
Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.—Bulwer-Lytton.
These evils I deserve, yet despair not of his final pardon whose ear is ever open, and his eye gracious to readmit the supplicant.—Milton.
Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within.—Dryden.
Parent.—The sacred books of the ancient Persians say: If you would be holy instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.—Montesquieu.
Partiality.—Partiality in a parent is commonly unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools, and the children that are least cockered make the best and wisest men.—L'Estrange.
As there is a partiality to opinions, which is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is also a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial to knowledge.—Locke.
Partiality is properly the understanding's judging according to the inclination of the will and affections, and not according to the exact truth of things, or the merits of the cause.—South.
Parting.—In every parting there is an image of death.—George Eliot.
Party.—He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man.—Lavater.
He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes.—Colton.
Passions.—Passions makes us feel but never see clearly.—Montesquieu.
Passions are likened best to floods and streams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.—Sir Walter Raleigh.
The passions are the voice of the body.—Rousseau.
The advice given by a great moralist to his friend was, that he should compose his passions; and let that be the work of reason which would certainly be the work of time.—Addison.
A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.—Burke.
There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.—George Eliot.
The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.—Longfellow.
"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire.—Bulwer-Lytton.
All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger.—Joubert.
It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Past.—Let the dead past bury its dead.—Longfellow.
Oh vanished times! splendors eclipsed for aye! Oh suns behind the horizon that have set.—Victor Hugo.
It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.—Martial.
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.—George Eliot.
Patience.—There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.—Bulwer-Lytton.
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.—George Eliot.
Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ills.—Johnson.
There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too.—Ruskin.
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.—Epictetus.
Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits.—G. MacDonald.
'Tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself.—Shakespeare.
He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing.—George Herbert.
Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot.—Joubert.
God is with the patient.—Koran.
Patience, the second bravery of man, is, perhaps, greater than the first.—Antonio de Solis.
Patience—the truest fortitude.—Milton.
Patriotism.—In peace patriotism really consists only in this—that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house.—Goethe.
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.—Decatur.
How dear is fatherland to all noble hearts.—Voltaire.
Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!—Daniel Webster.
There can be no affinity nearer than our country.—Plato.
Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.—Gladstone.
Peace.—They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.—Bible.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.—Shakespeare.
Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breed.—Spenser.
Peace gives food to the husbandman, even in the midst of rocks; war brings misery to him, even in the most fertile plains.—Menander.
Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth.—Shakespeare.
A land rejoicing and a people blest.—Pope.
Pedant.—As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too.—S. Smith.
With loads of learned lumber in his head.—Pope.
It is not a circumscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant.—Richter.
Perfection.—It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it can never be reached.—Johnson.
Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.—Alfred de Musset.
That historian who would describe a favorite character as faultless raises another at the expense of himself. Zeuxis made five virgins contribute their charms to his single picture of Helen; and it is as vain for the moralist to look for perfection in the mind, as for the painter to expect to find it in the body.—Colton.
Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.—Michael Angelo.
He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.—Spurgeon.
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.—Tennyson.
Persecution.—Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters forever.—Hazlitt.
Perseverance.—Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds.—Bacon.
Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.—Burke.
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.—Jeremy Collier.
Much rain wears the marble.—Shakespeare.
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.—George Eliot.
Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Perseverance is not always an indication of great abilities. An indifferent poet is invulnerable to a repulse, the want of sensibility in him being what a noble self-confidence was in Milton. These excluded suitors continue, nevertheless, to hang their garlands at the gate, to anoint the door-post, and even kiss the very threshold of her home, though the Muse beckons them not in.—Wordsworth.
Perverseness.—The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence.—George Eliot.
Philosophy.—Philosophy is the art of living.—Plutarch.
Philosophy consists not in airy schemes, or idle speculations; the rule and conduct of all social life is her great province.—Thomson.
The philosopher knows the universe and knows not himself.—Fontaine.
Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.—Lamartine.
It is a maxim received among philosophers themselves from the days of Aristotle down to those of Sir William Hamilton, that philosophy ceases where truth is acknowledged.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Physiognomy.—It is a point of cunning to wait upon him with whom you speak with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept; for there be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.—Bacon.
As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it; 'tis the short-hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.—Jeremy Collier.
The distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age; but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children.—Locke.
What knowledge is there, of which man is capable, that is not founded on the exterior; the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?—Lavater.
Piety.—Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world and vilifying human nature.—G. H. Lewes.
Piety softens all that courage bears.—Madame Swetchine.
Piety is a kind of modesty. It makes us turn aside our thoughts, as modesty makes us cast down our eyes in the presence of whatever is forbidden.—Joubert.
Piety is not an end, but a means of attaining the highest degree of culture by perfect peace of mind. Hence it is to be observed that those who make piety an end and aim in itself for the most part become hypocrites.—Goethe.
Pity.—Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and, finding it late, bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist; no, sir, I wish him to drive on.—Johnson.
Pity is sworn servant unto love, and this be sure, wherever it begin to make the way, it lets the master in.—Daniel.
Those many that need pity, and those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind.—Jeremy Taylor.
Of all the sisters of Love one of the most charming is Pity.—Alfred de Musset.
Place.—In place there is a license to do good and evil, whereof the latter is a curse; for in evil the best condition is not to will; the second, not to can.—Lord Bacon.
Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place; and this only by doing that which is great and noble.—Petrarch.
I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.—Bruyère.
A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.—Chapin.
Plagiarism.—Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists—wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.—Heinrich Heine.
Pleasure.—Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.—Aristotle.
We have not an hour of life in which our pleasures relish not some pain, our sours some sweetness.—Massinger.
How many there are that take pleasure in toil: that can outrise the sun, outwatch the moon, and outrun the field's wild beasts! merely out of fancy and delectation, they can find out mirth in vociferation, music in the barking of dogs, and be content to be led about the earth, over hedges and through sloughs, by the windings and the shifts of poor affrighted vermin; yet, after all, come off, as Messalina, tired, and not satisfied with all that the brutes can do. But were a man enjoined to this that did not like it, how tedious and how punishable to him would it prove! since, in itself, it differs not from riding post.—Feltham.
Boys immature in knowledge pawn their experience to their present pleasure.—Shakespeare.
'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's pleasures to ourselves. 'Tis like a child's using a little bird—"Oh, poor bird, thou shalt sleep with me"—so lays it in his bosom and stifles it with his hot breath. The bird had rather be in the cold air. And yet, too, 'tis the most pleasing flattery to like what other men like.—Selden.
There is no pleasure but that some pain is nearly allied to it.—Menander.
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.—Swift.
Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow.—George Herbert.
Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.—Jeremy Taylor.
Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.—Voltaire.
A man of pleasure is a man of pains.—Young.
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.—Johnson.
What would we not give to still have in store the first blissful moment we ever enjoyed!—Rochepèdre.
Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.—Montaigne.
Poetry.—Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.—Madame de Staël.
Poetry is the sister of sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.—Marc André.
Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.—Shakespeare.
Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young, and extremely beautiful, whom divers other virgins—namely, all the other sciences—make it their business to enrich, polish, and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give a lustre to them all.—Cervantes.
Poetry is the overflowing of the soul.—Tuckerman.
Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire, it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.—Mazzini.
Poetry is the music of thought, conveyed to us in the music of language.—Chatfield.
The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.—Shelley.
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.—Pope.
It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetrytalking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetryacting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.—Ruskin.
Thought in blossom.—Bishop Ken.
It is a ruinous misjudgment, too contemptible to be asserted, but not too contemptible to be acted upon, that the end of poetry is publication.—George MacDonald.
Wisdom married to immortal verse.—Wordsworth.
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.—Macaulay.
Thoughts, that voluntary move harmonious numbers.—Milton.
The world is so grand and so inexhaustible that subjects for poems should never be wanted. But all poetry should be the poetry of circumstance; that is, it should be inspired by the Real. A particular subject will take a poetic and general character precisely because it is created by a poet. All my poetry is the poetry of circumstance. It wholly owes its birth to the realities of life.—Goethe.
Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.—Joubert.
Perhaps there are no warmer lovers of the muse than those who are only permitted occasionally to gain her favors. The shrine is more reverently approached by the pilgrim from afar than the familiar worshiper. Poetry is often more beloved by one whose daily vocation is amid the bustle of the world. We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory!—Tuckerman.
Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.—Izaak Walton.
Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?" a question which would abolish the rose and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage.—Lowell.
The poetry of earth is never dead.—Keats.
Poets.—Poets, like race-horses, must be fed, not fattened.—Charles IX.
True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.—Madame Swetchine.
Modern poets mix much water with their ink.—Goethe.
There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.—Sydney Smith.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.—Wordsworth.
An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.—Holmes.
A little shallowness might be useful to many a poet! What is depth, after all? Is the pit deeper than the shallow mirror which reflects its lowest recesses?—Heinrich Heine.
We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears—a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion!—Heinrich Heine.
I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.—Swift.
Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.—Joubert.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—Shelley.
Poets are far rarer births than kings.—Ben Jonson.
One might discover schools of the poets as distinctly as schools of the painters, by much converse in them, and a thorough taste of their manner of writing.—Pope.
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.—Shelley.
Policy.—He has mastered all points who has combined the useful with the agreeable.—Horace.
At court one becomes a sort of human ant-eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Measures, not men, have always been my mark.—Goldsmith.
In a troubled state, we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.—Seldon.
To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.—George Eliot.
Politeness.—Politeness is fictitious benevolence. It supplies the place of it among those who see each other only in public, or but little. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have always applied to good breeding what Addison, in his "Cato," says of honor: "Honor's a sacred tie: the law of kings; the noble mind's distinguishing perfection; that aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions where she is not."—Johnson.
Self-command is the main elegance.—Emerson.
Politeness smooths wrinkles.—Joubert.
Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers.—De Finod.
Politics.—It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.—Daniel O'Connell.
Those who think must govern those who toil.—Goldsmith.
The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.—Swift.
Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.—Pope.
Wise men and gods are on the strongest side.—Sir C. Sedley.
The thorough-paced politician must laugh at the squeamishness of his conscience, and read it another lecture.—South.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; an hour may lay it in the dust.—Byron.
Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.—Johnson.
Possessions.—It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.—Shakespeare.
All comes from and will go to others.—George Herbert.
In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.—Charles Buxton.
In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.—South.
As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.—Montaigne.
Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,—that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.—Johnson.
Posterity.—Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.—Lord Stanley.
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.—Colton.
Poverty.—Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want—the want of money.—Zimmerman.
Few save the poor feel for the poor.—L. E. Landon.
Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.—Dante.
Riches endless is as poor as winter, to him that ever fears he shall be poor.—Shakespeare.
A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.—Goldsmith.
He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.—Daniel.
The wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Power.—The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.—Carlyle.
Oh for a forty parson power.—Byron.
Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Praise.—Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.—Colton.
Praise is the best diet for us after all.—Sydney Smith.
Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.—Washington Allston.
Damn with faint praise.—Pope.
Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the most part reserved for the gods.—Pythagoras.
Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.—Broadhurst.
One good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.—Shakespeare.
Prayer.—The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.—Wellington.
Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.—Shakespeare.
'Tis heaven alone that is given away; 'tis only God may be had for the asking.—Lowell.
Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God.—Channing.
The few that pray at all pray oft amiss.—Cowper.
Such words as Heaven alone is fit to hear.—Dryden.
What are men better than sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friends!—Tennyson.
Prayer ardent opens heaven.—Young.
Solicitude is the audience-chamber of God.—Landor.
The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.—Chapin.
He prayeth best who loveth best.—Coleridge.
Preaching.—Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?—Selden.
Preface.—Your opening promises some great design.—Horace.
A preface, being the entrance of a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendor of the interior.—Disraeli.
A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface—La salsa del libro—the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself.—Disraeli.
Prejudice.—He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.—J. Stuart Mill.
Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.—Aubrey de Vere.
All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.—Pope.
Prejudice is the reason of fools.—Voltaire.
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.—Diderot.
Present, The.—Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.—Goethe.
Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.—Schiller.
'Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.—Bovée.
The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.—Thoreau.
Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it.—Lamartine.
Presentiment.—We walk in the midst of secrets—we are encompassed with mysteries. We know not what takes place in the atmosphere thatsurrounds us—we know not what relations it has with our minds. But one thing is sure, that, under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason, and that the power is given it to antedate the future,—ay, to see into the future.—Goethe.
We should not neglect a presentiment. Every man has within him a spark of divine radiance which is often the torch which illumines the darkness of our future.—Madame de Girardin.
Press.—The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.—B. Disraeli.
Presumption.—Presumption is our natural and original disease.—Montaigne.
Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Cæsar comes once to pass the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not how much he trashes further.—South.
He that presumes steps into the throne of God.—South.
Pretence.—As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Pretension.—Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.—L'Estrange.
Pride.—I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts initsword, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.—Ruskin.
Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear—they eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.—Alexander Smith.
When pride thaws look for floods.—Bailey.
Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.—Frederick Saunders.
Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.—Johnson.
Principles.—Principle is a passion for truth.—Hazlitt.
Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.—Richter.
Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.—G. H. Lewes.
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.—Emerson.
What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery."—Bulwer-Lytton.
The change we personally experience from time to time we obstinately deny to our principles.—Zimmerman.
Printing.—Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.—George Meredith.
Prison.—Young Crime's finishing school.—Mrs. Balfour.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.—Beecher.
Procrastination.—Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.—Charles Buxton.
The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.—Hesiod.
There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.—Madame Swetchine.
Prodigality.—This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.—Dr. South.