Pearls of Thought Part 24

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.--_d.i.c.kens._

To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.--_Bossuet._

There are chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most pa.s.sionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill a.s.sist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view.--_d.i.c.kens._

A willing heart adds feathers to the heel, and makes the clown a winged Mercury.--_Joanna Baillie._

Some people's hearts are shrunk in them like dried nuts. You can hear 'em rattle as they walk.--_Douglas_ _Jerrold._

~Heaven.~--The love of heaven makes one heavenly.--_Shakespeare._

Where is heaven? I cannot tell. Even to the eye of faith, heaven looks much like a star to the eye of flesh. Set there on the brow of night, it s.h.i.+nes most bright, most beautiful; but it is separated from us by so great a distance as to be raised almost as high above our investigations as above the storms and clouds of earth.--_Rev. Dr. Guthrie._

When at eve at the bounding of the landscape the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope,--a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.--_Madame de Stael._

Few, without the hope of another life, would think it worth their while to live above the allurements of sense.--_Atterbury._

Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought. David and Isaiah will sweep n.o.bler and loftier strains in eternity, and the minds of the saints, unclogged by c.u.mbersome clay, will forever feast on the banquet of rich and glorious thought.--_Beecher._

~Heroes.~--A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.--_Chesterfield._

In a.n.a.lyzing the character of heroes it is hardly possible to separate altogether the share of Fortune from their own.--_Hallam._

Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.--_George Eliot._

No one is a hero to his valet.--_Madame de Sevigne._

~History.~--The Grecian history is a poem, Latin history a picture, modern history a chronicle.--_Chauteaubriand._

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But pa.s.sion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which s.h.i.+nes only on the waves behind us!--_Coleridge._

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.--_Gibbon._

We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.--_Johnson._

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.--_Joubert._

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult,--it is impossible. Even what is pa.s.sing in our presence we see but through a gla.s.s darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it; and in historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.--_Froude._

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror which merely reflects objects, but of the judge who sees, listens, and decides.--_Lamartine._

In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.--_Macaulay._

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.--_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving._

History has its foreground and its background, and it is princ.i.p.ally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another.

Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.--_Macaulay._

Violent natures make history. The instruments they use almost always kill. Religion and philosophy have their vestments covered with innocent blood.--_X. Doudan._

Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with immortality.--_Bancroft._

What history is not richer, does not contain far more, than they by whom it is enacted, the present witnesses! What mortal understandeth his way?--_Jacobi._

He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circ.u.mstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pa.s.s into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.--_Macaulay._

~Home.~--Home is the grandest of all inst.i.tutions.--_Spurgeon._

The first sure symptom of a mind in health is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.--_Young._

To most men their early home is no more than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.--_George Eliot._

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.--_Payne._

Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things; but don't scruple freedom in brightening home. Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are a sight day by day, and make life blither.--_Charles Buxton._

Home is the seminary of all other inst.i.tutions.--_Chapin._

~Honesty.~--If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.--_Johnson._

Persons lightly dipped, not grained, in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness.--_Sir T. Browne._

Refined policy has ever been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.--_Burke._

Money dishonestly acquired is never worth its cost, while a good conscience never costs as much as it is worth.--_J. Pet.i.t Senn._

The honest man is a rare variety of the human species.--_Chamfort._

~Honor.~--Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Hope.~--Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

"I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year; "they are a sweet-smelling flower--a species of roses."--_Hawthorne._

Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.--_Bacon._

The mighty hopes that make us men.--_Tennyson._

Thou captive's freedom, and thou sick man's health.--_Cowley._

I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, which may spoil all.--_George Eliot._

Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret.--_George Eliot._

Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of reveling to-day on the profits of to-morrow.--_Johnson._