Pearls of Thought Part 34

A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.--_Tennyson._

M.

~Madness.~--Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued un.o.bserved.--_Johnson._

~Man.~--It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.--_Pascal._

Man, I tell you, is a vicious animal.--_Moliere._

He is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims,--with immortal longings,--with thoughts which sweep the heavens, and wander through eternity. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.--_Carlyle._

Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much obscurity.--_Victor Hugo._

What a piece of work is a man! how n.o.ble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and movement, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a G.o.d! the beauty of the world!

the paragon of animals!--_Shakespeare._

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a G.o.d playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!--_Emerson._

In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.--_Walpole._

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.--_Alexander Hamilton._

I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command!--_Burke._

Men's natures are neither white nor black, but brown.--_Charles Buxton._

He is compounded of two very different ingredients, spirit and matter; but how such unallied and disproportioned substances should act upon each other, no man's learning yet could tell him.--_Jeremy Collier._

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope, the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at.--_Theodore Parker._

Men are but children of a larger growth; our appet.i.tes are apt to change as theirs, and full as craving, too, and full as vain.--_Dryden._

Little things are great to little men.--_Goldsmith._

Man himself is the crowning wonder of creation; the study of his nature the n.o.blest study the world affords.--_Gladstone._

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires.--_Lamartine._

~Manners.~--A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.--_Beecher._

All manners take a tincture from our own.--_Pope._

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.--_Emerson._

We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs, until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple: without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness.--_George Eliot._

We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly.--_Voltaire._

Nature is the best posture-master.--_Emerson._

Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.--_Johnson._

Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.--_Feltham._

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure.--_Emerson._

We are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.--_South._

Better were it to be unborn than to be ill-bred.--_Sir W. Raleigh._

Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.--_Jeffrey._

Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its s.h.i.+eld of bronze.--_Balzac._

Comport thyself in life as at a banquet. If a plate is offered thee, extend thy hand and take it moderately; if it be withdrawn, do not detain it. If it come not to thy side, make not thy desire loudly known, but wait patiently till it be offered thee.--_Epictetus._

Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and firm allies.--_Bartol._

The "over-formal" often impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.--_Whately._

~Martyrs.~--Even in this world they will have their judgment-day, and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight of nations.--_Mrs. Stowe._

It is not the death that makes the martyr, but the cause.--_Canon Dale._

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.--_Lamartine._

G.o.d discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter ent.i.tle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing.--_Addison._

~Matrimony.~--When a man and woman are married their romance ceases and their history commences.--_Rochebrune._

It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punis.h.i.+ng any one who comes between them.--_S. Smith._

Married in haste, we repent at leisure.--_Congreve._

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circ.u.mstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.--_Johnson._

Hanging and wiving go by destiny.--_Shakespeare._

The married man is like the bee that fixes his hive, augments the world, benefits the republic, and by a daily diligence, without wronging any, profits all; but he who contemns wedlock, like a wasp, wanders an offence to the world, lives upon spoil and rapine, disturbs peace, steals sweets that are none of his own, and, by robbing the hives of others, meets misery as his due reward.--_Feltham._

One can, with dignity, be wife and widow but once.--_Joubert._

Few natures can preserve through years the poetry of the first pa.s.sionate illusion. That can alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial that consecrates its grave.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

It's hard to wive and thrive both in a year.--_Tennyson._

Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.--_Shakespeare._