Читать книгу Pearls of Thought - Ballou Maturin Murray - Страница 6

Dandy.– A dandy is a clothes-wearing man, – a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person, and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object, – the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. —Carlyle.

A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool's coat still. —Rivarol.

Danger.– It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea, and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck. —Colton.

Death.– It is not death, it is dying, that alarms me. —Montaigne.

What is death? To go out like a light, and in a sweet trance to forget ourselves and all the passing phenomena of the day, as we forget the phantoms of a fleeting dream; to form, as in a dream, new connections with God's world; to enter into a more exalted sphere, and to make a new step up man's graduated ascent of creation. —Zschokke.

Heaven gives its favorites early death. —Byron.

Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph. —Ruskin.

There are remedies for all things but death. —Carlyle.

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. —Mme. de Staël.

Too early fitted for a better state. —Dryden.

Death, the dry pedant, spares neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power, – monuments of decay, graves of primeval kings. —Heinrich Heine.

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, but has one vacant chair! —Longfellow.

And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds, there's a lean fellow beats all conquerors. —Thomas Dekker.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time. —Goethe.

To the Christian, whose life has been dark with brooding cares that would not lift themselves, and on whom chilling rains of sorrow have fallen at intervals through all his years, death is but the clearing-up shower; and just behind it are the songs of angels, and the serenity and glory of heaven. —Beecher.

That golden key that opes the palace of eternity. —Milton.

When death gives us a long lease of life, it takes as hostages all those whom we have loved. —Madame Necker.

Man makes a death which nature never made. —Young.

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion – Death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet – of Immortality! —Dickens.

God's finger touched him, and he slept. —Tennyson.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. —Bible.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual. —Fontenelle.

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. —Shakespeare.

Flesh is but the glass which holds the dust that measures all our time, which also shall be crumbled into dust. —George Herbert.

Death expecteth thee everywhere; be wise, therefore, and expect death everywhere. —Quarles.

The world. Oh, the world is so sweet to the dying! —Schiller.

The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it, – the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. —George MacDonald.

The dissolution of forms is no loss in the mass of matter. —Pliny.

Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death. —Young.

Debt.– He that dies pays all debts. —Shakespeare.

Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life. —Spurgeon.

The first step in debt is like the first step in falsehood, almost involving the necessity of proceeding in the same course, debt following debt as lie follows lie. Haydon, the painter, dated his decline from the day on which he first borrowed money. —Samuel Smiles.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity. —Johnson.

That swamp [of debt] which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there, – in a condition in which, spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul. —George Eliot.

Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Deceit.– No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. —Hawthorne.

Idiots only may be cozened twice. —Dryden.

It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. —Fontaine.

There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats. —Chapin.

Like unto golden hooks that from the foolish fish their baits do hide. —Spenser.

Libertines are hideous spiders that often catch pretty butterflies. —Diderot.

Decency.– As beauty of body, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in that we observe all the parts with a certain elegance are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behavior which appears in our lives obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions. —Steele.

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination. —Tully.

Declamation.– Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions, or musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious; where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. —Goldsmith.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. —Colton.

Deeds.– A word that has been said may be unsaid: it is but air. But when a deed is done, it cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow. —Longfellow.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done! —Shakespeare.

Legal deeds were invented to remind men of their promises, or to convict them of having broken them, – a stigma on the human race. —Bruyère.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds. —Cervantes.

We should believe only in works; words are sold for nothing everywhere. —Rojas.

Delay.– We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light. —Thoreau.

Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action, which ought to be performed! and is delayed in the execution. —Veeshnoo Sarma.

Democracy.– Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by. —Carlyle.

The love of democracy is that of equality. —Montesquieu.

Dependence.– The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces. —Mrs. Stowe.

Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of other's bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs. —Dante.

How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work, neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other and bear each other's burdens. —G. A. Sala.

We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder. —Emerson.

Desire.– It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. —Franklin.

Lack of desire is the greatest riches. —Seneca.

Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites. —Johnson.

The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied. —Cicero.

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man. —Coleridge.

Desires are the pulse of the soul. —Manton.

Despair.– Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair. —Fielding.

Leaden-eyed despair. —Keats.

In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in. —De Witt Talmage.

He that despairs limits infinite power to finite apprehensions. —South.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his helper is omnipotent. —Jeremy Taylor.

He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model. —South.

Juliet was a fool to kill herself, for in three months she'd have married again, and been glad to be quit of Romeo. —Charles Buxton.

What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. —George Eliot.

Despotism.– It is difficult for power to avoid despotism. The possessors of rude health; the individualities cut out by a few strokes, solid for the very reason that they are all of a piece; the complete characters whose fibres have never been strained by a doubt; the minds that no questions disturb and no aspirations put out of breath, – these, the strong, are also the tyrants. —Countess de Gasparin.

There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world. —Daniel Webster.

Destiny.– The scape-goat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a necessity which we set down for invincible, when we have no wish to strive against it. —Mrs. Balfour.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. —George Eliot.

Detention.– Never hold any one by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them. —Chesterfield.

Detraction.– Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. —Shakespeare.

In some unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with a but of detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him suspected by their silence. —Feltham.

Dew.– That same dew, which sometimes withers buds, was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes, like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail. —Shakespeare.

Earth's liquid jewelry, wrought of air. —P. J. Bailey.

Diet.– Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature: but more especially we should learn to suffer, grow old, and die. Some things are salutary, and others hurtful. Eat with moderation what you know by experience agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience. —Voltaire.

Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea. —Washington Irving.

Difficulties.– The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them. —Goethe.

The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. Hope is born in the long night of watching and tears. Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality. —Chapin.

How strangely easy difficult things are! —Charles Buxton.

Diffidence.– Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself. If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not, please. But with proper endeavors to please, and a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will. —Chesterfield.

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me. —Emerson.

Dignity.– It is at once the thinnest and most effective of all the coverings under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. Most of the men of dignity, who awe or bore their more genial brethren, are simply men who possess the art of passing off their insensibility for wisdom, their dullness for depth, and of concealing imbecility of intellect under haughtiness of manner. —Whipple.

Dirt.– "Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. —George Eliot.

Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold. —Lamb.

Disappointment.– Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of existence are strewn with them. —Mme. de Staël.

O world! how many hopes thou dost engulf! —Alfred de Musset.

Thirsting for the golden fountain of the fable, from how many streams have we turned away, weary and in disgust! —Bulwer-Lytton.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others. —George Eliot.

Ah! what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me. —Richter.

Discourtesy.– Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several, – from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. —La Bruyère.

Discovery.– Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls as a golden link in the great chain of order. —Chapin.

Discretion.– Be discreet in all things, and go render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any. —Wellington.

Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his particular station of life. —Addison.

Dishonesty.– So grasping is dishonesty that it is no respecter of persons: it will cheat friends as well as foes; and, were it possible, even God himself! —Bancroft.

Dispatch.– Use dispatch. Remember that the world only took six days to create. Ask me for whatever you please except time: that is the only thing which is beyond my power. —Napoleon.

True dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wares, and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch. —Bacon.

Disposition.– A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest. —Fielding.

A good disposition is more valuable than gold; for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature. —Addison.

Distrust.– As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust. —Wendell Phillips.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? —George Eliot.

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly. —Johnson.

Doubt.– Remember Talleyrand's advice, "If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not – don't!" The advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Doubt is hell in the human soul. —Gasparin.

Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul. —J. Petit Senn.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. —Shakespeare.

The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. —X. Doudan.

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. —Tennyson.

Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt. —Victor Hugo.

Dreams.– Children of night, of indigestion bred. —Churchill.

A world of the dead in the hues of life. —Mrs. Hemans.

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. —Milton.

Dreams always go by contraries, my dear. —Samuel Lover.

We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. —Sir T. Browne.

The mockery of unquiet slumbers. —Shakespeare.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams. —Tennyson.

Dress.– It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists. —Rousseau.

Duty.– Stern daughter of the voice of God. —Wordsworth.

Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life. —Gladstone.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. —Bible.

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. —George Eliot.

Do the duty which lies nearest to thee. —Goethe.

Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would. —George MacDonald.

To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads! —Byron.

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty to God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by. —Thomas Paine.