Pearls of Thought Part 37

Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds.--_Calderon._

Temperate as the morn.--_Shakespeare._

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Mother.~--Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain.

In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.--_Macaulay._

Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had not been for one thing, the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caused me to repeat the Lord's Prayer.--_Thomas Randolph._

The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man.--_George Eliot._

When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother,--mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman.--_Luther._

There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart.--_Hemans._

~Motive.~--The morality of an action depends upon the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but with respect to me, the action is very wrong.--_Johnson._

Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever s.h.i.+fts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning.--_Chapin._

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.--_Kreeshna._

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.--_George Eliot._

Every activity proposes to itself a pa.s.sivity, every labor enjoyment.--_Jacobi._

~Mourning.~--Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!--_Tennyson._

The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews.--_Thomson._

~Music.~--Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune.--_Lamb._

All musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished pa.s.sion.--_Sydney Smith._

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.--_Mrs.

Stowe._

There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say that music is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of s.p.a.ce.--_Heinrich Heine._

The hidden soul of harmony.--_Milton._

Give me some music! music, moody food of us that trade in love.--_Shakespeare._

Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse.--_Tuckerman._

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.--_Milton._

Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.--_Goethe._

Music, which gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.--_Tennyson._

Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.--_George Eliot._

Music can n.o.ble hints impart, engender fury, kindle love, with unsuspected eloquence can move and manage all the man with secret art.--_Addison._

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world; one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound.--_Mazzini._

N.

~Navete.~--Navete is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is not natural.--_Mendelssohn._

~Name.~--A virtuous name is the precious only good for which queens and peasants' wives must contest together.--_Schiller._

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and sc.r.a.pe without injuring the man himself.--_Goethe._

~Napoleon.~--Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones.--_Byron._

Napoleon I. might have been the Was.h.i.+ngton of France; he preferred to be another Attila,--a question of taste.--_F. A. Durivage._

~Nature.~--Nature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with aesop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her.--_Bacon._

Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature.--_De Finod._

Nature,--a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in _everywhere_.--_Emerson._

Nature is poetic, but not mankind. When one aims at truth it is easier to find the poetic side of nature than of man.--_X. Doudan._

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.--_Chapin._

Nature is no sentimentalist,--does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your s.h.i.+ps like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.--_Emerson._

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit: a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit.

Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,--the root, the branch, the fruits,--the principles, the consequences.--_Pascal._

A n.o.ble nature can alone attract the n.o.ble, and alone knows how to retain them.--_Goethe._

Nature, the vicar of the almighty Lord.--_Chaucer._

A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.--_Coleridge._

We, by art, unteach what Nature taught.--_Dryden._