Pearls of Thought Part 51

~Sloth.~--Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.--_Colton._

~Smile.~--A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy--the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby.--_Haliburton._

Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.--_Winthrop._

Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.--_Shakespeare._

The smile that was childlike and bland.--_Bret Harte._

A soul only needs to see a smile in a white c.r.a.pe bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.--_Victor Hugo._

~Sneer.~--The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.--_Hazlitt._

~Society.~--If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.--_Lavater._

Formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.--_Byron._

Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken.

Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.--_Emerson._

We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.--_Chamfort._

Society is the union of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and yet man may remain.--_Montesquieu._

There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.--_Taine._

Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for acc.u.mulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.--_Tuckerman._

Intercourse is the soul of progress.--_Charles Buxton._

One ought to love society if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.--_Zimmermann._

The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.--_Madame Roland._

The more I see of men the better I think of animals.--_Tauler._

~Soldier.~--A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.--_Shakespeare._

Policy goes beyond strength, and contrivance before action; hence it is that direction is left to the commander, execution to the soldier, who is not to ask Why? but to do what he is commanded.--_Xenophon._

Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.--_Schiller._

Soldiers looked at as they ought to be: they are to the world as poppies to corn fields.--_Douglas Jerrold._

~Solitude.~--Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appet.i.te, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superst.i.tious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.--_Johnson._

To be exempt from the pa.s.sions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.--_Addison._

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.--_Gibbon._

Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.--_Byron._

Through the wide world he only is alone who lives not for another.--_Rogers._

Solitude is the worst of all companions when we seek comfort and oblivion.--_Mery._

~Sophistry.~--The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.--_Coleridge._

There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.--_Sir W. Raleigh._

~Sorrow.~--Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.--_Sh.e.l.ley._

If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e'er I did commit.--_Shakespeare._

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.--_Gray._

The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.--_Seneca._

Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.--_Keats._

The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.--_Sir P. Sidney._

Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.--_Tennyson._

Sorrow being the natural and direct offspring of sin, that which first brought sin into the world must, by necessary consequence, bring in sorrow too.--_South._

In extent sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is small. It drowns few.--_Charles Buxton._

It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanis.h.i.+ng of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.--_Chapin._

The mind profits by the wreck of every pa.s.sion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.--_Moore._

Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.--_Shakespeare._

Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.--_Mazzini._

Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.--_Schiller._

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.--_Jeremy Taylor._

~Soul.~--Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything rea.s.sumes its order after death.--_Rousseau._

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul?

It is immaterial.--_Hood._

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.--_George Eliot._