Pearls of Thought Part 53

Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.--_Charles Buxton._

Success at first doth many times undo men at last.--_Venning._

~Suicide.~--Suicide itself, that fearful abuse of the dominion of the soul over the body, is a strong proof of the distinction of their destinies.

Can the power that kills be the same that is killed? Must it not necessarily be something superior and surviving? The act of the soul, which in that fatal instant is in one sense so great an act of power, can it at the same time be the act of its own annihilation? The will kills the body, but who kills the will?--_Auguste_ _Nicolas._

Those men who destroy a healthful const.i.tution of body by intemperance as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves.--_Sherlock._

He who, superior to the checks of nature, dares make his life the victim of his reason, does in some sort that reason deify, and takes a flight at heaven.--_Young._

~Summer.~--Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes.--_Thomson._

Beneath the Winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers.--_Whittier._

~Sun.~--The glorious sun stays in his course, and plays the alchemist, turning with the splendor of his precious eyes the meagre, cloddy earth to glittering gold.--_Shakespeare._

The downward sun looks out effulgent from amid the flash of broken clouds.--_Thomson._

~Sunday.~--If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.--_Macaulay._

Oh, what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath-day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.--_W. Wilberforce._

~Superst.i.tion.~--A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superst.i.tion than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel.--_George Eliot._

Religion wors.h.i.+ps G.o.d, while superst.i.tion profanes that wors.h.i.+p.--_Seneca._

Every inordination of religion that is not in defect is properly called superst.i.tion.--_Jeremy Taylor._

The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.--_Watts._

Superst.i.tion is the only religion of which base souls are capable.--_Joubert._

It is of such stuff that superst.i.tions are commonly made; an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star s.h.i.+ne at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superst.i.tions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding.--_George Eliot._

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superst.i.tious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.--_Holmes._

~Surety.~--He who is surety is never sure. Take advice, and never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose. Remember the words of the wise man. "He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it; and he that hateth suretys.h.i.+p is sure."--_Spurgeon._

~Surfeit.~--They are sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.--_Shakespeare._

Satiety comes of riches, and contumaciousness of satiety.--_Solon._

~Suspicion.~--To be suspicious is to invite treachery.--_Voltaire._

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.--_Th.o.r.eau._

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.--_Madame Swetchine._

Don't seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching.--_George Eliot._

~Sympathy.~--Surely, surely, the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circ.u.mstance and opinion.--_George Eliot._

Next to love, sympathy is the divinest pa.s.sion of the human heart.--_Burke._

Outward things don't give, they draw out. You find in them what you bring to them. A cathedral makes only the devotional feel devotional.

Scenery refines only the fine-minded.--_Charles Buxton._

Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands; be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.--_Sterne._

T.

~Tact.~--A tact which surpa.s.sed the tact of her s.e.x as much as the tact of her s.e.x surpa.s.ses the tact of ours.--_Macaulay._

~Talent.~--It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd that are destined for the collar and the yoke.--_Colton._

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing!--_Sydney Smith._

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.--_Colton._

As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us. They rise where they are least expected. They fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.--_Burke._

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry, and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.--_Hazlitt._

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.--_Coleridge._

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon.--_George Eliot._

~Talking.~--I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue, that an echo must wait till she dies, before it can catch her last words!--_Congreve._

Talkers are no good doers.--_Shakespeare._

When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in woman?--_Holmes._

Who think too little and who talk too much.--_Dryden._

They talk most who have the least to say.--_Prior._

~Taste.~--Taste is the power of relis.h.i.+ng or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.--_Goldsmith._

There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appet.i.te or digestion by studying a cookery-book.--_Southey._

Those internal powers, active and strong, and feelingly alive to each fine impulse.--_Akenside._

All our tastes are but reminiscences.--_Lamartine._