Pearls of Thought Part 25

It is necessary to hope, though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.--_Johnson._

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.--_Victor Hugo._

~Humanity.~--A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds: therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.--_Bacon._

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.--_Burke._

Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.--_Steele._

I do not know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men, but 'tis always a mortification to me to observe that there is no perfection in humanity.--_Montagu._

The true proof of the inherent n.o.bleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is n.o.ble wherever crowds are collected.

Never believe the world is base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Humility.~--It is from out the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, G.o.d comes in, and is everything in me.--_Mountford._

Should any ask me, What is the first thing in religion? I would reply, The first, second, and third thing therein, nay all, is humility.--_St.

Augustine._

Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."--_Plutarch._

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.--_Franklin._

Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tigers' claws.--_Heinrich Heine._

Trees that, like the poplar, lift upwards all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their bows.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with G.o.d and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little and others much.--_Archbishop Leighton._

~Humor.~--The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.--_Coleridge._

The oil and wine of merry meeting.--_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving._

These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms.--_Addison._

~Hyperbole.~--Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied with hyperbole.--_Bruyere._

Let us have done with reproaching; for we may throw out so many reproachful words on one another that a s.h.i.+p of a hundred oars would not be able to carry the load.--_Homer._

~Hypocrisy.~--Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks G.o.d, presenting to him the outside, and reserving the inward for his enemy.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Hypocrisy has become a fas.h.i.+onable vice, and all fas.h.i.+onable vices pa.s.s for virtue.--_Moliere._

Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal.--_Swift._

Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy.--_Mme. de Maintenon._

As a man loves gold, in that proportion he hates to be imposed upon by counterfeits; and in proportion as a man has regard for that which is above price and better than gold, he abhors that hypocrisy which is but its counterfeit.--_Cecil._

Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to G.o.d alone.--_Milton._

Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man's hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still: that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.--_Cowper._

I hate hypocrites, who put on their virtues with their white gloves.--_Alfred de Musset._

Such a man will omit neither family wors.h.i.+p, nor a sneer at his neighbor. He will neither milk his cows on the first day of the week without a Sabbath mask on his face, nor remove it while he waters the milk for his customers.--_George Mac Donald._

The fatal fact in the case of a hypocrite is that he is a hypocrite.--_Chapin._

'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to show himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie.--_Montaigne._

I.

~Ideas.~--After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.--_George Eliot._

Our ideas are transformed sensations.--_Condillac._

In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.--_Heinrich Heine._

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.--_Holmes._

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues.

It impales and sustains.--_Taine._

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.--_X. Doudan._

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.--_Joubert._

Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.--_Voltaire._

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Idleness.~--If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.--_Sydney Smith._

Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.--_Spurgeon._

In idleness there is perpetual despair.--_Carlyle._

Doing nothing with a deal of skill.--_Cowper._

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.--_Colton._

The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.--_d.i.c.kens._

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.--_Chesterfield._

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.--_Jeremy Taylor._