Pearls of Thought Part 22

The graves of those we have loved and lost distress and console us.--_a.r.s.ene Houssaye._

~Gravity.~--The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge than a man is worth.--_Sterne._

Gravity is but the rind of wisdom; but it is a preservative rind.--_Joubert._

Gravity must be natural and simple. There must be urbanity and tenderness in it. A man must not formalize on everything. He who formalizes on everything is a fool, and a grave fool is perhaps more injurious than a light fool.--_Cecil._

~Greatness.~--There is but one method, and that is hard labor; and a man who will not pay that price for greatness had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or sport with the tangles of Neaera's hair, or talk of bullocks, and glory in the goad!--_Sidney Smith._

A really great man is known by three signs,--generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, and moderation in success.--_Bismarck._

The great men of the earth are but the marking stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.--_Mazzini._

A mult.i.tude of eyes will narrowly inspect every part of an eminent man, consider him nicely in all views, and not be a little pleased when they have taken him in the worst and most disadvantageous lights.--_Addison._

What you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will never multiply its quant.i.ty, nor lower its price; and nearly the best thing that men can generally do is--to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds out of our own charcoal.--_Ruskin._

Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.--_Bacon._

The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superst.i.tious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore.--_Macaulay._

Great men never make a bad use of their superiority; they see it, they feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.--_Rousseau._

He who is great when he falls is great in his prostration, and is no more an object of contempt than when men tread on the ruins of sacred buildings, which men of piety venerate no less than if they stood.--_Seneca._

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.--_Beecher._

Greatness seems in her [Madame de Maintenon] to take its n.o.blest form, that of simplicity.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Grief.~--Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? for every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.--_Sydney Smith._

Some griefs are medicinable; and this is one.--_Shakespeare._

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be _digested_. And then amus.e.m.e.nt will dissipate the remains of it.--_Johnson._

Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.--_P. J. Bailey._

All the joys of earth will not a.s.suage our thirst for happiness, while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.--_Madame Swetchine._

Grief has been compared to a hydra, for every one that dies two are born.--_Calderon._

Grief, like night, is salutary. It cools down the soul by putting out its feverish fires; and if it oppresses her, it also compresses her energies. The load once gone, she will go forth with greater buoyancy to new pleasures.--_Dr. Pulsford._

What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief.--_Shakespeare._

~Guilt.~--All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.--_Shakespeare._

Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past, terrors of the future,--these are the domestic Furies that are ever present to the mind of the impious.--_Cicero._

Guiltiness will speak though tongues were out of use.--_Shakespeare._

Despair alone makes guilty men be bold.--_Coleridge._

The sin lessens in human estimation only as the guilt increases.--_Schiller._

There are no greater prudes than those women who have some secret to hide.--_George Sand._

~Gunpowder.~--If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.--_Gibbon._

A coa.r.s.e-grained powder, used by cross-grained people, playing at cross-grained purposes.--_Marryatt._

Gunpowder is the emblem of politic revenge, for it biteth first, and barketh afterwards; the bullet being at the mark before the report is heard, so that it maketh a noise, not by way of warning, but of triumph.--_Fuller._

H.

~Habits.~--Habits are soon a.s.sumed; but when we strive to strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.--_Cowper._

Vicious habits are so odious and degrading that they transform the individual who practices them into an incarnate demon.--_Cicero._

Unless the habit leads to happiness, the best habit is to contract none.--_Zimmerman._

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.--_George D. Boardman._

Habit, if wisely and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.--_Bacon._

That beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly.--_George Eliot._

Habits are the daughters of action, but they nurse their mothers, and give birth to daughters after her image, more lovely and prosperous.--_Jeremy Taylor._

~Hair.~--The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning.--_Luther._

Her head was bare, but for her native ornament of hair, which in a simple knot was tied above; sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!--_Dryden._

The robe which curious nature weaves to hang upon the head.--_Dekker._

Robed in the long night of her deep hair.--_Tennyson._

~Hand.~--Other parts of the body a.s.sist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our a.s.sent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time.--_Quintilian._

The Greeks adored their G.o.ds by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony, declined with Paganism; but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. At present it is only practiced as a mark of obedience from the subject to the sovereign, and by lovers, who are solicitous to preserve this ancient usage in its full power.--_Disraeli._

~Handsome.~--They are as heaven made them, handsome enough if they be good enough; for handsome is that handsome does.--_Goldsmith._

~Happiness.~--The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman; the foundation of political happiness is confidence in the integrity of man; the foundation of all happiness, temporal and eternal, is reliance on the goodness of G.o.d.--_Landor._

To remember happiness which cannot be restored is pain, but of a softened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions that we bitterly repent; still, in the most checkered life, I firmly think there are so many little rays of suns.h.i.+ne to look back upon that I do not believe any mortal would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters of Lethe if he had it in his power.--_d.i.c.kens._