Pearls of Thought Part 43

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.--_South._

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.--_Montaigne._

Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,--that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.--_Johnson._

~Posterity.~--Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compa.s.s.

Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.--_Lord Stanley._

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.--_Colton._

~Poverty.~--Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want--the want of money.--_Zimmerman._

Few save the poor feel for the poor.--_L. E. Landon._

Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.--_Dante._

Riches endless is as poor as winter, to him that ever fears he shall be poor.--_Shakespeare._

A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched sc.r.a.per alive, throws the audience into raptures.--_Goldsmith._

He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.--_Daniel._

The wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Power.~--The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its pa.s.sage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.--_Carlyle._

Oh for a forty parson power.--_Byron._

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Praise.~--Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the ill.u.s.trious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, a.s.similate not.--_Colton._

Praise is the best diet for us after all.--_Sydney Smith._

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.--_Was.h.i.+ngton Allston._

d.a.m.n with faint praise.--_Pope._

Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the most part reserved for the G.o.ds.--_Pythagoras._

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.--_Broadhurst._

One good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.--_Shakespeare._

~Prayer.~--The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.--_Wellington._

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.--_Shakespeare._

'Tis heaven alone that is given away; 'tis only G.o.d may be had for the asking.--_Lowell._

Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with G.o.d.--_Channing._

The few that pray at all pray oft amiss.--_Cowper._

Such words as Heaven alone is fit to hear.--_Dryden._

What are men better than sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing G.o.d, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friends!--_Tennyson._

Prayer ardent opens heaven.--_Young._

Solicitude is the audience-chamber of G.o.d.--_Landor._

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.--_Chapin._

He prayeth best who loveth best.--_Coleridge._

~Preaching.~--Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?--~Selden.~

~Preface.~--Your opening promises some great design.--_Horace._

A preface, being the entrance of a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendor of the interior.--_Disraeli._

A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something a.n.a.logous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface--La salsa del libro--the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appet.i.te in the reader to devour the book itself.--_Disraeli._

~Prejudice.~--He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.--_J. Stuart Mill._

Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.--_Aubrey de Vere._

All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.--_Pope._

Prejudice is the reason of fools.--_Voltaire._

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.--_Diderot._

~Present, The.~--Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is pa.s.sing.--_Goethe._

Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.--_Schiller._

'Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.--_Bovee._

The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.--_Th.o.r.eau._

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no sh.o.r.e, it rushes on and carries us with it.--_Lamartine._

~Presentiment.~--We walk in the midst of secrets--we are encompa.s.sed with mysteries. We know not what takes place in the atmosphere that surrounds us--we know not what relations it has with our minds. But one thing is sure, that, under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason, and that the power is given it to antedate the future,--ay, to see into the future.--_Goethe._

We should not neglect a presentiment. Every man has within him a spark of divine radiance which is often the torch which illumines the darkness of our future.--_Madame de Girardin._

~Press.~--The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours.