Pearls of Thought Part 44

It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.--_B. Disraeli._

~Presumption.~--Presumption is our natural and original disease.--_Montaigne._

Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Caesar comes once to pa.s.s the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not how much he trashes further.--_South._

He that presumes steps into the throne of G.o.d.--_South._

~Pretence.~--As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saints.h.i.+p about him which is enough to make him a humbug.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Pretension.~--Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.--_L'Estrange._

~Pride.~--I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other pa.s.sions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in _its_ word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.--_Ruskin._

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear--they eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.--_Alexander Smith._

When pride thaws look for floods.--_Bailey._

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quant.i.ties. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.--_Frederick Saunders._

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.--_Johnson._

~Principles.~--Principle is a pa.s.sion for truth.--_Hazlitt._

Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.--_Richter._

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.--_G. H. Lewes._

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.--_Emerson._

What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery."--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The change we personally experience from time to time we obstinately deny to our principles.--_Zimmerman._

~Printing.~--Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.--_George Meredith._

~Prison.~--Young Crime's finis.h.i.+ng school.--_Mrs. Balfour._

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.--_Beecher._

~Procrastination.~--Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.--_Charles Buxton._

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.--_Hesiod._

There is, by G.o.d's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Prodigality.~--This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.--_Dr.

South._

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.--_Goldsmith._

The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.--_Socrates._

~Progress.~--All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.--_Gibbon._

What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which G.o.d leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.--_X. Doudan._

Revolutions never go backwards.--_Emerson._

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost!

Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.--_Bartol._

Progress is lame.--_St. Bueve._

We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful a.n.a.logies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.--_George Eliot._

The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.--_G. H. Lewes._

Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.--_Mazzini._

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.--_Heinrich Heine._

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.--_Mazzini._

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.--_Longfellow._

The activity of to-day and the a.s.surance of to-morrow.--_Emerson._

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that pa.s.ses idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.--_Mazzini._

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Promise.~--Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and grat.i.tude a thread.--_J. Pet.i.t Senn._

~Proof.~--In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses.--_Cicero._

Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon.--_Shakespeare._

~Prosperity.~--Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.--_Vauvenargues._

That fort.i.tude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be a.s.signed.--_Johnson._

Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.--_aeschylus._

Prosperity lets go the bridle.--_George Herbert._

~Proverbs.~--Proverbs are somewhat a.n.a.logous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists'

shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.--_Bishop Whately._

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.--_Motherwell._