When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.—Goldsmith.
The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.—Socrates.
Progress.—All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.—Gibbon.
What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.—X. Doudan.
Revolutions never go backwards.—Emerson.
What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.—Bartol.
Progress is lame.—St. Bueve.
We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.—George Eliot.
The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.—G. H. Lewes.
Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.—Mazzini.
Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.—Heinrich Heine.
Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.—Mazzini.
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.—Longfellow.
The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.—Emerson.
The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.—Mazzini.
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Promise.—Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and gratitude a thread.—J. Petit Senn.
Proof.—In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses.—Cicero.
Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon.—Shakespeare.
Prosperity.—Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.—Vauvenargues.
That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.—Johnson.
Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.—Æschylus.
Prosperity lets go the bridle.—George Herbert.
Proverbs.—Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.—Bishop Whately.
The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.—Motherwell.
The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.—Lavater.
Prudence.—There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure.—Rochefoucauld.
Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters.—Whitfield.
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.—Aristophanes.
Punctuality.—The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.—Brillat Savarin.
Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Punishment.—One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.—Juvenal.
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.—Plato.
Punishment is lame, but it comes.—George Herbert.
If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.—Locke.
Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?—George Eliot.
The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.—Goldsmith.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.—Cato.
The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!—Hawthorne.
Puns.—I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so theyoughtto be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.—Sydney Smith.
Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense.—Addison.
Purposes.—Man proposes, but God disposes.—Thomas à Kempis.
A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.—Bible.
It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.—Herodotus.
Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.—Smiles.
Pursuit.—The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.—Longfellow.
The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.—Lady Montagu.
Quacks.—Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax—the folly and ignorance of mankind.—Colton.
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.—Thoreau.
Qualities.—Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.—Goethe.
Quarrels.—Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.—George Eliot.
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.—Mme. Necker.
Questions.—There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?—Johnson.
Quotation.—In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.—Selden.
If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.—Jeremy Taylor.
If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.—Burke.
It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.—Coleridge.
Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places.—Hannah More.
I take memorandums of the schools.—Swift.
The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.—Mazzini.
To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.—Trublet.
Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.—Coleridge.
A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.—J. Petit Senn.
As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.—De Quincey.
Rain.—Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.—Roscommon.
The kind refresher of the summer heats.—Thomson.
Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.—Waller.
The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.—Dryden.
Rainbow.—That smiling daughter of the storm.—Colton.
Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.—J. C. Prince.
God's glowing covenant.—Hosea Ballou.
Rank.—If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.—Madame Swetchine.
I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.—Wycherley.
Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.—Southerne.
Rashness.—Rashness and haste make all things insecure.—Denham.
We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.—Shakespeare.
Reading.—Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.—Congreve.
Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.—Milton.
The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.—Montesquieu.
There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars.—Macaulay.
Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.—Shakespeare.
The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet.—Coleridge.
Reason.—Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.—George Herbert.
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.—Voltaire.
If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.—Shakespeare.
We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.—Bolingbroke.
I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.—Joubert.
I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so, because I think him so.—Shakespeare.
Reason 's progressive; instinct is complete: swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.—Young.
Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near,—sees nothing that's above her.—Quarles.
How can finite grasp infinity?—Dryden.
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.—Goethe.
Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart.—Heinrich Heine.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.—Shakespeare.
Reason may cure illusions but not suffering.—Alfred de Musset.
Reciprocity.—There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word isreciprocity. What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.—Confucius.
Reconciliation.—It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.—Owen Feltham.
Rectitude.—The great high-road of human welfare lies along the highway of steadfast well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.—Samuel Smiles.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.—Thoreau.
No man can do right unless he is good, wise, and strong. What wonder we fail?—Charles Buxton.
Refinement.—Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.—Beecher.
Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.—Beecher.
Reflection.—We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.—Sydney Smith.
Reform.—We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old—reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.—Emerson.
Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.—Milton.
Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, to curb desire, to break the stubborn will, and work a second nature in the soul.—Rowe.
They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!—Shakespeare.
Regret.—Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache?—Richter.
Religion.—Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.—Emerson.
I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy!—Sydney Smith.
Nowhere would there be consolation if religion were not.—Jacobi.
Monopolies are just as injurious to religion as to trade. With competition religions preserve their strength, but they will never again flourish in their original glory until religious freedom, or, in other words, free trade among the gods, is introduced.—Heinrich Heine.
A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force, and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair.—Channing.
Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded.—J. Petit Senn.
Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.—Shelley.
The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a certain range, subject to wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel.—Gladstone.
The best religion is the most tolerant.—Emile de Girardin.
Remembrance.—The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.—Cato.
Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.—Boufflers.
Remorse.—Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.—Joubert.
Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.—Rousseau.
Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.—Shakespeare.
Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.—Gray.
Repartee.—The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.—Molière.
Repentance.—-Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.—Sterling.
He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.—Quarles.
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.—Moore.
Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away?—Anna Cora Ritchie.
Repentance is second innocence.—De Bonald.
Repose.—Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.—Sydney Smith.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.—Plutarch.
Reproach.—Few love to hear the sins they love to act.—Shakespeare.
The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.—Mrs. Balfour.
Republic.—Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.—Walpole.
The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion, might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."—Heinrich Heine.
At twenty, every one is republican.—Lamartine.
Reputation.—Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.—Sydney Smith.
An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.—Tacitus.
Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.—Washington Allston.
My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.—Bacon.
The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.—Johnson.
One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.—Laténa.
Request.—No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.—Cæsar.
He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.—Lavater.
Resignation.—O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.—Fénelon.
Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.—Mountford.
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal thanks.—Shakespeare.
Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pass that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.—Robert Collyer.
Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.—Thomson.
"My will, not thine, be done," turned Paradise into a desert. "Thy will, not mine, be done," turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.—Pressense.
Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.—Dr. Vinet.
Responsibility.—Responsibility educates.—Wendell Phillips.
Restlessness.—The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity—a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.—Goethe.
Always driven towards new shores, or carried hence without hope of return, shall we never, on the ocean of age cast anchor for even a day?—Lamartine.
Retribution.—Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.—George Eliot.
"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.—George Eliot.
Revenge.—Revenge at first, though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils.—Milton.
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.—Colton.
There are some professed Christians who would gladly burn their enemies, but yet who forgive them merely because it is heaping coals of fire on their heads.—F. A. Durivage.
Revery.—In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.—Wordsworth.
Revolution.—The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.—Herder.
Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.—Mazzini.
All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.—Jefferson.
Nothing has ever remained of any revolution hut what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.—Ledru Rollin.
Revolution is the larva of civilization.—Victor Hugo.
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always lie proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.—Macaulay.
Let them call it mischief; when it's past and prospered, 't will be virtue.—Ben Jonson.
Rhetoric.—In composition, it is the art of putting ideas together in graceful and accurate prose; in speaking, it is the art of delivering ideas with propriety, elegance, and force; or, in other words, it is the science of oratory.—Locke.
Rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with a free expression, when they understand not reason.—Selden.
The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to cheated into passion, but reasoned into truth.—Dryden.
All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.—Locke.
Rhetoric is very good, or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.—Selden.
Riches.—The shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches.—Seneca.
One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.—Johnson.
Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.—Bonnell.
If the search for riches were sure to be successful, though I should become a groom with a whip in my hand to get them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow after that which I love.—Confucius.
I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, more money, that he may still get more. He is still drudging, saying what Solomon says, "The diligent hand maketh rich." And it is true, indeed; but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said by a man of great observation that "there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them."—Izaak Walton.
Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit, than he who bestows one.—Owen Feltham.
In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.—Joubert.
Ridicule.—Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off, not a stone goes through.—Beecher.
Rogues.—Rogues are always found out in some way. Whoever is a wolf will act as a wolf; that is the most certain of all things.—La Fontaine.
Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.—Hazlitt.
Ruin.—To be ruined your own way is some comfort. When so many people would ruin us, it is a triumph over the villany of the world to be ruined after one's own pattern.—Douglas Jerrold.
Sacrifice.—You cannot win without sacrifice.—Charles Buxton.
What you most repent of is a lasting sacrifice made under an impulse of good-nature. The good-nature goes, the sacrifice sticks.—Charles Buxton.
Sadness.—Take my word for it, the saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness.—Countess de Gasparin.
Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.—Thoreau.
Salary.—Other rules vary; this is the only one you will find without exception: That in this world the salary or reward is always in the inverse ratio of the duties performed.—Sydney Smith.
Sarcasm.—A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick—it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it—sharp and deadly and incisive—which makes you tremble and recoil.—Sydney Smith.
Satire.—To lash the vices of a guilty age.—Churchill.
Thou shining supplement of public laws!—Young.
By satire kept in awe, shrink from ridicule, though not from law.—Byron.
When dunces are satiric I take it for a panegyric.—Swift.
Scandal.—Believe that story false that ought not to be true.—Sheridan.
Scandal has something so piquant, it is a sort of cayenne to the mind.—Byron.
School.—More is learned in a public than in a private school from emulation: there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre—Johnson.
Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad,—a person less imposing,—in the eyes of some, perhaps, insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.—Brougham.
The whining school-boy, with his satchel, and shining morning face, creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school.—Shakespeare.
Science.—They may say what they like; everything is organized matter. The tree is the first link of the chain, man is the last. Men are young, the earth is old. Vegetable and animal chemistry are still in their infancy. Electricity, galvanism,—what discoveries in a few years!—Napoleon.
Human science is uncertain guess.—Prior.
Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.—Prof. Hitchcock.
Science is a first rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.—Holmes.
Scriptures.—The majesty of Scripture strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.—Rousseau.
Secrecy.—Thou hast betrayed thy secret as a bird betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.—Longfellow.
Never confide your secrets to paper: it is like throwing a stone in the air, and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.—Calderon.
People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.—Hazlitt.
Sect.—The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.—Macaulay.
All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.—Voltaire.
Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.—De Quincey.
Self-Abnegation.—'Tis much the doctrine of the times that men should not please themselves, but deny themselves everything they take delight in; not look upon beauty, wear no good clothes, eat no good meat, etc., which seems the greatest accusation that can be upon the Maker of all good things. If they are not to be used why did God make them?—Selden.
Self-abnegation, that rare virtue that good men preach and good women practice.—Holmes.
Self-Examination.—We neither know nor judge ourselves,—others may judge, but cannot know us,—God alone judges, and knows too.—Wilkie Collins.
It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.—George Eliot.
There are two persons in the world we never see as they are,—one's self and one's other self.—Arsène Houssaye.
Selfishness.—Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor his infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.—Hannah More.
It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.—George Eliot.
There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive,—the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Self-Love.—That household god, a man's own self.—Flavel.
The greatest of all flatterers is self-love.—Rochefoucauld.
Self-love exaggerates both our faults and our virtues.—Goethe.
Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.—Rochefoucauld.
Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.—Ruffini.
A prudent consideration for Number One.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.—Erasmus.
The most inhibited sin in the canon.—Shakespeare.
Ofttimes nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.—Milton.
Whose thoughts are centered on thyself alone.—Dryden.
Self-reliance.—The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is doneformen or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.—Samuel Smiles.
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.—Bovée.
A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.—Livy.
The supreme fall of falls is this, the first doubt of one's self.—Countess de Gasparin.
It's right to trust in God; but if you don't stand to your halliards, your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.—George MacDonald.
The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.—Emerson.
Sensibility.—The wild-flower wreath of feeling, the sunbeam of the heart.—Halleck.
Sensibility is the power of woman.—Lavater.
Feeling loves a subdued light.—Madame Swetchine.
Sensitiveness.—Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.—George Eliot.
That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.—Burke.
Sentiment.—Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?—Emerson.
Separation.—Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.—Madame Swetchine.
Shakespeare.—There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.—Heinrich Heine.
Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears.—T. B. Shaw.
Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.—Goethe.
In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.—Coleridge.
No man is too busy to read Shakespeare.—Charles Buxton.
Shakespeare's personages live and move as if they had just come from the hand of God, with a life that, though manifold, is one, and, though complex, is harmonious.—Mazzini.
Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child.—Milton.
And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.—Campbell.
Shakespeare is one of the best means of culture the world possesses. Whoever is at home in his pages is at home everywhere.—H. N. Hudson.
His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.—Emerson.
I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.—O. W. Holmes.
Whatever other learning he wanted he was master of two books unknown to many profound readers, though books which the last conflagration can alone destroy. I mean the book of Nature and of Man.—Young.
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.—Macaulay.
It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.—Johnson.
The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.—Keats.
Shame.—Nature's hasty conscience.—Maria Edgeworth.
Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.—Goldsmith.
Ship.—A prison with the chance of being drowned.—Johnson.
Cradle of the rude imperious surge.—Shakespeare.
Silence.—The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Give thy thoughts no tongue.—Shakespeare.
True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak.—Ben Jonson.
I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.—Zeno.
Silence in times of suffering is the best.—Dryden.
Silence! coeval with eternity.—Pope.
Silence is the sanctuary of prudence.—Balthasar Gracian.
The unspoken word never does harm.—Kossuth.
Silence is the understanding of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.—Bonnard.
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.—George Eliot.
Silence gives consent.—Goldsmith.
Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.—Zimmerman.
Simplicity.—Simplicity is doubtless a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.—Madame de Girardin.
Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.—P. J. Bailey.
The world could not exist if it were not simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.—Goethe.
The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model, without miracle, without extravagance.—Montaigne.
There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.—Pope.
Sin.—Original sin is in us like the beard: we are shaved to-day, and look clean, and have a smooth chin; to-morrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. In like manner original sin cannot be extirpated from us; it springs up in us as long as we exist; Nevertheless, we are bound to resist it to our utmost strength, and to cut it down unceasingly.—Luther.
Sin, in fancy, mothers many an ugly fact.—Theodore Parker.
There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and sure to one and all.—Hosea Ballou.
Every man has his devilish minutes.—Lavater.
Death from sin no power can separate.—Milton.
Our sins, like to our shadows, when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared. Towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!—Sir J. Suckling.
'Tis the will that makes the action good or ill.—Herrick.
Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.—Sir Walter Scott.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.—Shakespeare.
Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.—Plato.
Sin and her shadow death.—Milton.
If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do it; and if ye do evil, against yourselves will ye do it.—Koran.
It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.—Boileau.
There are sins of omission as well as those of commission.—Madame Deluzy.
Sincerity.—Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.—Tillotson.
The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.—Coleridge.
Skepticism.—Skepticism is slow suicide.—Emerson.
Skill.—Nobody, however able, can gain the very highest success, except in one line. He may rise above others, but he will fall below himself.—Charles Buxton.
Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.—Walter Scott.
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.—Gibbon.
Slander.—Done to death by slanderous tongues.—Shakespeare.
Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.—Douglas Jerrold.
Slander lives upon succession, forever housed where it gets possession.—Shakespeare.
When the absent are spoken of, some will speak gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and some always speak dirt, for they have a natural attraction towards what is evil, and think it shows penetration in them. As a cat watching for mice does not look up though an elephant goes by, so are they so busy mousing for defects, that they let great excellences pass them unnoticed. I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you are such an one.—Beecher.
If parliament were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as sporting on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame as well as game, there are many would thank them for the bill.—Sheridan.
Sleep.—When one asked Alexander how he could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of danger, he told them thatParmeniowatched. Oh, how securely may they sleep over whom He watches that never slumbers nor sleeps! "I will," said David, "lay me down and sleep, for thou, Lord, makest me to dwell in safety."—Venning.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.—Shakespeare.
Sleep is no servant of the will; it has caprices of its own; when courted most, it lingers still; when most pursued, 'tis swiftly gone.—Bowring.
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.—Bible.
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.—Alcott.
Night's sepulchre.—Byron.
Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.—Donne.
Sleep, to the homeless thou art home; the friendless find in thee a friend.—Ebenezer Elliott.
The soul shares not the body's rest.—Maturin.
Our foster nurse of nature is repose.—Shakespeare.
Sloth.—Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.—Colton.
Smile.—A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy—the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby.—Haliburton.
Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.—Winthrop.
Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.—Shakespeare.
The smile that was childlike and bland.—Bret Harte.
A soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.—Victor Hugo.
Sneer.—The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severestcritics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.—Hazlitt.
Society.—If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.—Lavater.
Formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.—Byron.
Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.—Emerson.
We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.—Chamfort.
Society is the union of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and yet man may remain.—Montesquieu.
There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.—Taine.
Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.—Tuckerman.
Intercourse is the soul of progress.—Charles Buxton.
One ought to love society if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.—Zimmermann.
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.—Madame Roland.
The more I see of men the better I think of animals.—Tauler.
Soldier.—A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.—Shakespeare.
Policy goes beyond strength, and contrivance before action; hence it is that direction is left to the commander, execution to the soldier, who is not to ask Why? but to do what he is commanded.—Xenophon.
Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.—Schiller.
Soldiers looked at as they ought to be: they are to the world as poppies to corn fields.—Douglas Jerrold.
Solitude.—Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.—Johnson.
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.—Addison.
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.—Gibbon.
Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.—Byron.
Through the wide world he only is alone who lives not for another.—Rogers.
Solitude is the worst of all companions when we seek comfort and oblivion.—Méry.
Sophistry.—The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.—Coleridge.
There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Sorrow.—Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.—Shelley.
If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e'er I did commit.—Shakespeare.
And weep the more, because I weep in vain.—Gray.
The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.—Seneca.
Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.—Keats.
The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.—Sir P. Sidney.
Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.—Tennyson.
Sorrow being the natural and direct offspring of sin, that which first brought sin into the world must, by necessary consequence, bring in sorrow too.—South.
In extent sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is small. It drowns few.—Charles Buxton.
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.—Chapin.
The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.—Moore.
Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.—Shakespeare.
Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.—Mazzini.
Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.—Schiller.
He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.—Jeremy Taylor.
Soul.—Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.—Rousseau.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.—Hood.
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.—George Eliot.
Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Specialty.—No one can exist in society without some specialty. Eighty years ago it was only necessary to be well dressed and amiable; to-day a man of this kind would be too much like the garçons at the cafés.—Taine.
Speech.—Sheridan once said of some speech, in his acute, sarcastic way, that "it contained a great deal both of what was new and what was true: but that unfortunately what was new was not true, and what was true was not new."—Hazlitt.
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.—Heinrich Heine.
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language and has a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth: so people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.—Dean Swift.
Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.—Plutarch.
Never is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come, long after, back to memory, like the murmurs of a distant hymn.—Henry Giles.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless—nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.—George Eliot.
Sport.—Dwell not too long upon sports; for as they refresh a man that is weary, so they weary a man that is refreshed.—Fuller.
Spring.—Stately Spring! whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening.—Richter.
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace.—Thomson.
The spring, the summer, the chiding autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries.—Shakespeare.
Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire, hoar Winter's blooming child, delightful Spring.—Mrs. Barbauld.
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth, by the winds which tell of the violet's birth.—Mrs. Hemans.
Stars.—These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.—Emerson.
I am as constant as the northern star; of whose true, fixed, and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.—Shakespeare.
The stars are so far,—far away!—L. E. Landon.
Day hath put on his jacket, and around his burning bosom buttoned it with stars.—Holmes.
The evening star, love's harbinger, appeared.—Milton.
Statesman.—The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.—Burke.
The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.—J. Stuart Mill.
Storms.—When splitting winds make flexible the knees of knotted oaks.—Shakespeare.
Strength.—Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.—Shakespeare.
Study.—Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.—Bacon.
Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.—Bolingbroke.
There is no one study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it.—Pope.
They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material: a man must build his house for himself.—George MacDonald.