Pearls of Thought Part 40

~Pa.s.sions.~--Pa.s.sions makes us feel but never see clearly.--_Montesquieu._

Pa.s.sions are likened best to floods and streams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.--_Sir Walter Raleigh._

The pa.s.sions are the voice of the body.--_Rousseau._

The advice given by a great moralist to his friend was, that he should compose his pa.s.sions; and let that be the work of reason which would certainly be the work of time.--_Addison._

A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent pa.s.sions as a great fire with great heat.--_Burke._

There are moments when our pa.s.sions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.--_George Eliot._

The blossoms of pa.s.sion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly.--_Longfellow._

"All the pa.s.sions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both pa.s.sions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is pa.s.sionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

All the pa.s.sions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger.--_Joubert._

It is the excess and not the nature of our pa.s.sions which is perishable.

Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the pa.s.sions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Past.~--Let the dead past bury its dead.--_Longfellow._

Oh vanished times! splendors eclipsed for aye! Oh suns behind the horizon that have set.--_Victor Hugo._

It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.--_Martial._

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.--_George Eliot._

~Patience.~--There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.--_George Eliot._

Patience, sovereign o'er trans.m.u.ted ills.--_Johnson._

There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fort.i.tude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fort.i.tude, and the rarest, too.--_Ruskin._

The two powers which in my opinion const.i.tute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.--_Epictetus._

Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. G.o.d can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits.--_G. MacDonald._

'Tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself.--_Shakespeare._

He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing.--_George Herbert._

Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot.--_Joubert._

G.o.d is with the patient.--_Koran._

Patience, the second bravery of man, is, perhaps, greater than the first.--_Antonio de Solis._

Patience--the truest fort.i.tude.--_Milton._

~Patriotism.~--In peace patriotism really consists only in this--that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house.--_Goethe._

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.--_Decatur._

How dear is fatherland to all n.o.ble hearts.--_Voltaire._

Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of G.o.d, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!--_Daniel Webster._

There can be no affinity nearer than our country.--_Plato._

Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.--_Gladstone._

~Peace.~--They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.--_Bible._

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.--_Shakespeare._

Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friends.h.i.+p breed.--_Spenser._

Peace gives food to the husbandman, even in the midst of rocks; war brings misery to him, even in the most fertile plains.--_Menander._

Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth.--_Shakespeare._

A land rejoicing and a people blest.--_Pope._

~Pedant.~--As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too.--_S. Smith._

With loads of learned lumber in his head.--_Pope._

It is not a circ.u.mscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant.--_Richter._

~Perfection.~--It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it can never be reached.--_Johnson._

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.--_Alfred de Musset._

That historian who would describe a favorite character as faultless raises another at the expense of himself. Zeuxis made five virgins contribute their charms to his single picture of Helen; and it is as vain for the moralist to look for perfection in the mind, as for the painter to expect to find it in the body.--_Colton._

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.--_Michael Angelo._

He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.--_Spurgeon._

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.--_Tennyson._

~Persecution.~--Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circ.u.mstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters forever.--_Hazlitt._

~Perseverance.~--Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds.--_Bacon._

Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.--_Burke._