Pearls of Thought Part 47

~Remorse.~--Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation.

The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.--_Joubert._

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.--_Rousseau._

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.--_Shakespeare._

Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.--_Gray._

~Repartee.~--The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.--_Moliere._

~Repentance.~---Repentance clothes in gra.s.s and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.--_Sterling._

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.--_Quarles._

Beholding heaven, and feeling h.e.l.l.--_Moore._

Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away?--_Anna Cora Ritchie._

Repentance is second innocence.--_De Bonald._

~Repose.~--Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose.

A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.--_Sydney Smith._

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.--_Plutarch._

~Reproach.~--Few love to hear the sins they love to act.--_Shakespeare._

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.--_Mrs. Balfour._

~Republic.~--Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.--_Walpole._

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion, might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."--_Heinrich Heine._

At twenty, every one is republican.--_Lamartine._

~Reputation.~--Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.--_Sydney Smith._

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.--_Tacitus._

Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.--_Was.h.i.+ngton Allston._

My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.--_Bacon._

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.--_Johnson._

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.--_Latena._

~Request.~--No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my a.s.sistance.--_Caesar._

He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.--_Lavater._

~Resignation.~--O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.--_Fenelon._

Let G.o.d do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.--_Mountford._

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal thanks.--_Shakespeare._

Trust in G.o.d, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pa.s.s that your life at last shall surpa.s.s even your longing.

Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth G.o.d; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.--_Robert Collyer._

Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.--_Thomson._

"My will, not thine, be done," turned Paradise into a desert. "Thy will, not mine, be done," turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.--_Pressense._

Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.--_Dr. Vinet._

~Responsibility.~--Responsibility educates.--_Wendell Phillips._

~Restlessness.~--The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity--a pa.s.sive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.--_Goethe._

Always driven towards new sh.o.r.es, or carried hence without hope of return, shall we never, on the ocean of age cast anchor for even a day?--_Lamartine._

~Retribution.~--Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the G.o.ds; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.--_George Eliot._

"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--_George Eliot._

~Revenge.~--Revenge at first, though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils.--_Milton._

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.--_Colton._

There are some professed Christians who would gladly burn their enemies, but yet who forgive them merely because it is heaping coals of fire on their heads.--_F. A. Durivage._

~Revery.~--In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.--_Wordsworth._

~Revolution.~--The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.--_Herder._

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.--_Mazzini._

All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolis.h.i.+ng the forms to which they are accustomed.--_Jefferson._

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution hut what was ripe in the conscience of the ma.s.ses.--_Ledru Rollin._

Revolution is the larva of civilization.--_Victor Hugo._

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more a.s.sured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always lie proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.--_Macaulay._

Let them call it mischief; when it's past and prospered, 't will be virtue.--_Ben Jonson._