Pearls of Thought Part 31

Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.--_Cicero._

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued acc.u.mulation of single propositions.--_Johnson._

No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.--_Thomas a Kempis._

Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless commodity, but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most of the great fortunes in the kingdom.--_Fielding._

For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training is a much greater misfortune.--_Plato._

No power can exterminate the seeds of liberty when it has germinated in the blood of brave men. Our religion of to-day is still that of martyrdom; to-morrow it will be the religion of victory.--_Mazzini._

~Leisure.~--"Never less idle than when idle," was the motto which the admirable Vittoria Colonna wrought upon her husband's dressing-gown. And may we not justly regard our appreciation of leisure as a test of improved character and growing resources?--_Tuckerman._

Leisure is gone; gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.--_George Eliot._

~Libels.~--Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property.

Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all valuable. The law forbids you to revenge; when it ties up the hands of some, it ought to restrain the tongues of others.--_Burke._

If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.--_Balzac._

~Liberty.~--Liberty is the right to do what the laws allow; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, it would be no longer liberty, because others would have the same powers.--_Montesquieu._

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.--_Daniel Webster._

Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.--_Was.h.i.+ngton._

~Library.~--A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.--_Seneca._

He has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world, and the glories of a modern one.--_Longfellow._

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.--_Lamb._

~Life.~--Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the pieces are swept back into the box--black box with the gilded nails!--_Bulwer-Lytton._

We never live, but we ever hope to live.--_Pascal._

Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful b.u.t.terflies, and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and b.u.t.terflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived--to reach a desert waste.--_G. A. Sala._

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.--_Colton._

The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four-score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.--_Bible._

When I reflect upon what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; and I look on what has pa.s.sed as one of those wild dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive illusion.--_Chesterfield._

Life is like a game of whist. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.--_George Eliot._

He most lives who thinks most, feels the n.o.blest, acts the best; and he whose heart beats the quickest lives the longest.--_James Martineau._

Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistledown.--_George Eliot._

When we embark in the dangerous s.h.i.+p called Life, we must not, like Ulysses, be tied to the mast; we must know how to listen to the songs of the sirens and to brave their blandishments.--_a.r.s.ene Houssaye._

Life is thick sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pa.s.s quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.--_Voltaire._

The earnestness of life is the only pa.s.sport to the satisfaction of life.--_Theodore Parker._

I am convinced that there is no man that knows life well, and remembers all the incidents of his past existence, who would accept it again; we are certainly here to punish precedent sins.--_Campbell._

The childhood of immortality.--_Goethe._

So our lives glide on; the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ash.o.r.e.--_George Eliot._

We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.--_L'Estrange._

This tide of man's life after it once turneth and declineth ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again.--_Sir W. Raleigh._

If the first death be the mistress of mortals, and the mistress of the universe, reflect then on the brevity of life. "I have been, and that is all," said Saladin the Great, who was conqueror of the East. The longest liver had but a handful of days, and life itself is but a circle, always beginning where it ends.--_Henry Mayhew._

Why all this toil for the triumphs of an hour?--_Young._

The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh.--_Prior._

Life's short summer--man is but a flower.--_Johnson._

Man lives only to s.h.i.+ver and perspire.--_Sydney Smith._

O frail estate of human things!--_Dryden._

Many think themselves to be truly G.o.d-fearing when they call this world a valley of tears. But I believe they would be more so, if they called it a happy valley. G.o.d is more pleased with those who think everything right in the world, than with those who think nothing right. With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingrat.i.tude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?--_Richter._

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.--_Johnson._

We never live: we are always in the expectation of living.--_Voltaire._

Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun.--_Augusta Evans._

~Light.~--Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun sends into our windows, which he pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.--_Dr. Channing._

More light!--_Goethe's last words._

Light! Nature's resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom.--_Thomson._

Hail! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born!--_Milton._

We should render thanks to G.o.d for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch, by which we might behold his works.--_Caussin._

~Likeness.~--Like, but oh, how different!--_Wordsworth._

~Lips.~--Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow.--_Bailey._