Pearls of Thought Part 49

It is astonis.h.i.+ng how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.--_George Eliot._

There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive,--the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Self-Love.~--That household G.o.d, a man's own self.--_Flavel._

The greatest of all flatterers is self-love.--_Rochefoucauld._

Self-love exaggerates both our faults and our virtues.--_Goethe._

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.--_Rochefoucauld._

Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.--_Ruffini._

A prudent consideration for Number One.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.--_Erasmus._

The most inhibited sin in the canon.--_Shakespeare._

Ofttimes nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.--_Milton._

Whose thoughts are centered on thyself alone.--_Dryden._

~Self-reliance.~--The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it const.i.tutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done _for_ men or cla.s.ses, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.--_Samuel Smiles._

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.--_Bovee._

A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.--_Livy._

The supreme fall of falls is this, the first doubt of one's self.--_Countess de Gasparin._

It's right to trust in G.o.d; but if you don't stand to your halliards, your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.--_George MacDonald._

The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.--_Emerson._

~Sensibility.~--The wild-flower wreath of feeling, the sunbeam of the heart.--_Halleck._

Sensibility is the power of woman.--_Lavater._

Feeling loves a subdued light.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Sensitiveness.~--Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.--_George Eliot._

That chast.i.ty of honor which felt a stain like a wound.--_Burke._

~Sentiment.~--Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the p.a.w.nee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?--_Emerson._

~Separation.~--Indifferent souls never part. Impa.s.sioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Shakespeare.~--There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.--_Heinrich Heine._

Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears.--_T. B. Shaw._

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.--_Goethe._

In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.--_Coleridge._

No man is too busy to read Shakespeare.--_Charles Buxton._

Shakespeare's personages live and move as if they had just come from the hand of G.o.d, with a life that, though manifold, is one, and, though complex, is harmonious.--_Mazzini._

Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child.--_Milton._

And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.--_Campbell._

Shakespeare is one of the best means of culture the world possesses.

Whoever is at home in his pages is at home everywhere.--_H. N. Hudson._

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest s.p.a.ces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.--_Emerson._

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.--_O. W.

Holmes._

Whatever other learning he wanted he was master of two books unknown to many profound readers, though books which the last conflagration can alone destroy. I mean the book of Nature and of Man.--_Young._

If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.--_Macaulay._

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.--_Johnson._

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.--_Keats._

Shame.--Nature's hasty conscience.--_Maria Edgeworth._

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.--_Goldsmith._

~s.h.i.+p.~--A prison with the chance of being drowned.--_Johnson._

Cradle of the rude imperious surge.--_Shakespeare._

~Silence.~--The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Give thy thoughts no tongue.--_Shakespeare._

True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak.--_Ben Jonson._

I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.--_Zeno._