Pearls of Thought Part 30

~Labor.~--Labor is the divine law of our existence; repose is desertion and suicide.--_Mazzini._

Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his G.o.d-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty G.o.d!--_Carlyle._

The fact is nothing comes; at least nothing good. All has to be fetched.--_Charles Buxton._

Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them.--_Joubert._

As steady application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.--_Samuel Smiles._

Nature is just towards men. It recompenses them for their sufferings; it renders them laborious, because to the greatest toils it attaches the greatest rewards.--_Montesquieu._

Virtue's guard is Labor, ease her sleep.--_Ta.s.so._

Alexander the Great, reflecting on his friends degenerating into sloth and luxury, told them that it was a most slavish thing to luxuriate, and a most royal thing to labor.--_Barrow._

Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael.--_Goethe._

He that thinks that diversion may not lie in hard labor forgets the early rising and hard riding of huntsmen.--_Locke._

The pain of life but sweetens death; the hardest labor brings the soundest sleep.--_Albert Smith._

What men want is not talent, it is purpose; not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The true epic of our times is not "arms and the man," but "tools and the man," an infinitely wider kind of epic.--_Carlyle._

Labor is the curse of the world, and n.o.body can meddle with it without becoming proportionably brutified!--_Hawthorne._

~Land.~--There is a distinct joy in owning land, unlike that which you have in money, in houses, in books, pictures, or anything else which men have devised. Personal property brings you into society with men. But land is a part of G.o.d's estate in the globe; and when a parcel of ground is deeded to you, and you walk over it, and call it your own, it seems as if you had come into partners.h.i.+p with the original Proprietor of the earth.--_Beecher._

~Language.~--The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The key to the sciences.--_Bruyere._

A countryman is as warm in fustian as a king in velvet, and a truth is as comfortable in homely language as in fine speech. As to the way of dis.h.i.+ng up the meat, hungry men leave that to the cook, only let the meat be sweet and substantial.--_Spurgeon._

The machine of the poet.--_Macaulay._

Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.--_Johnson._

Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee: it springs out of the most retired and inmost part of us.--_Ben Jonson._

If the way in which men express their thoughts is slipshod and mean, it will be very difficult for their thoughts themselves to escape being the same. If it is high flown and bombastic, a character for national simplicity and thankfulness cannot long be maintained.--_Dean Alford._

~Laughter.~--Conversation never sits easier than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter; which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.--_Steele._

The laughers are a majority.--_Pope._

Learn from the earliest days to inure your principles against the perils of ridicule: you can no more exercise your reason, if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life if you are in the constant terror of death.--_Sydney Smith._

How much lies in laughter: the cipher key, wherewith we decipher the whole man!--_Carlyle._

G.o.d made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness.--_Leigh Hunt._

How inevitably does an immoderate laughter end in a sigh!--_South._

Laughing, if loud, ends in a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Laughter means sympathy.--_Carlyle._

One good, hearty laugh is a bombsh.e.l.l exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who shoots it off.--_De Witt Talmage._

I am sure that since I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me laugh.--_Chesterfield._

I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, that shower at the same time pearls and the soul.--_Victor Hugo._

Laughter is a most healthful exertion; it is one of the greatest helps to digestion with which I am acquainted; and the custom prevalent among our forefathers, of exciting it at table by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true medical principles.--_Dr. Hufeland._

~Law.~--With us, law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste paper, lacking all executive force.--_Wendell Phillips._

Of all the parts of a law, the most effectual is the _vindicatory_; for it is but lost labor to say, "Do this, or avoid that," unless we also declare, "This shall be the consequence of your non-compliance." The main strength and force of a law consists in the penalty annexed to it.--_Blackstone._

If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.--_Ruskin._

It would be very singular if this great shad-net of the law did not enable men to catch at something, balking for the time the eternal flood-tide of justice.--_Chapin._

True law is right reason conformably to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil.--_Cicero._

Aristotle himself has said, speaking of the laws of his own country, that jurisprudence, or the knowledge of those laws, is the princ.i.p.al and most perfect branch of ethics.--_Blackstone._

In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination, to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislation.--_Burke._

In the habits of legal men every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny. It is thus that justice itself loses its sanct.i.ty and its respect amongst men.--_Lamartine._

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.--_Shakespeare._

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.--_Bolingbroke._

A mouse-trap; easy to enter but not easy to get out of.--_Mrs Balfour._

What can idle laws do with morals?--_Horace._

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Learning.~--It adds a precious seeing to the eye.--_Shakespeare._

You are to consider that learning is of great use to society; and though it may not add to the stock, it is a necessary vehicle to transmit it to others. Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountain-heads.--_James Northcote._

Learning makes a man fit company for himself.--_Young._