Pearls of Thought Part 42

The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.--_Sh.e.l.ley._

Truth s.h.i.+nes the brighter clad in verse.--_Pope._

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetry _talking_, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry _acting_. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.--_Ruskin._

Thought in blossom.--_Bishop Ken._

It is a ruinous misjudgment, too contemptible to be a.s.serted, but not too contemptible to be acted upon, that the end of poetry is publication.--_George MacDonald._

Wisdom married to immortal verse.--_Wordsworth._

By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.--_Macaulay._

Thoughts, that voluntary move harmonious numbers.--_Milton._

The world is so grand and so inexhaustible that subjects for poems should never be wanted. But all poetry should be the poetry of circ.u.mstance; that is, it should be inspired by the Real. A particular subject will take a poetic and general character precisely because it is created by a poet. All my poetry is the poetry of circ.u.mstance. It wholly owes its birth to the realities of life.--_Goethe._

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.--_Joubert._

Perhaps there are no warmer lovers of the muse than those who are only permitted occasionally to gain her favors. The shrine is more reverently approached by the pilgrim from afar than the familiar wors.h.i.+per. Poetry is often more beloved by one whose daily vocation is amid the bustle of the world. We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory!--_Tuckerman._

Old-fas.h.i.+oned poetry, but choicely good.--_Izaak Walton._

Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?" a question which would abolish the rose and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage.--_Lowell._

The poetry of earth is never dead.--_Keats._

~Poets.~--Poets, like race-horses, must be fed, not fattened.--_Charles IX._

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.--_Madame Swetchine._

Modern poets mix much water with their ink.--_Goethe._

There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets.

They swarm like the sp.a.w.n of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.--_Sydney Smith._

There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.--_Wordsworth._

An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.--_Holmes._

A little shallowness might be useful to many a poet! What is depth, after all? Is the pit deeper than the shallow mirror which reflects its lowest recesses?--_Heinrich Heine._

We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears--a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion!--_Heinrich Heine._

I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.--_Swift._

Words become luminous when the poet's finger has pa.s.sed over them its phosph.o.r.escence.--_Joubert._

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.--_Sh.e.l.ley._

Poets are far rarer births than kings.--_Ben Jonson._

One might discover schools of the poets as distinctly as schools of the painters, by much converse in them, and a thorough taste of their manner of writing.--_Pope._

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.--_Sh.e.l.ley._

~Policy.~--He has mastered all points who has combined the useful with the agreeable.--_Horace._

At court one becomes a sort of human ant-eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Measures, not men, have always been my mark.--_Goldsmith._

In a troubled state, we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.--_Seldon._

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.--_George Eliot._

~Politeness.~--Politeness is fict.i.tious benevolence. It supplies the place of it among those who see each other only in public, or but little.

Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have always applied to good breeding what Addison, in his "Cato," says of honor: "Honor's a sacred tie: the law of kings; the n.o.ble mind's distinguis.h.i.+ng perfection; that aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions where she is not."--_Johnson._

Self-command is the main elegance.--_Emerson._

Politeness smooths wrinkles.--_Joubert._

Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers.--_De Finod._

~Politics.~--It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest pa.s.sions of mean confederates.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.--_Daniel O'Connell._

Those who think must govern those who toil.--_Goldsmith._

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of gra.s.s, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.--_Swift._

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.--_Pope._

Wise men and G.o.ds are on the strongest side.--_Sir C. Sedley._

The thorough-paced politician must laugh at the squeamishness of his conscience, and read it another lecture.--_South._

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; an hour may lay it in the dust.--_Byron._

Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.--_Johnson._

~Possessions.~--It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.--_Shakespeare._

All comes from and will go to others.--_George Herbert._

In life, as in chess, one's own p.a.w.ns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.--_Charles Buxton._