Pearls of Thought Part 56

Truth need not always be embodied; enough if it hovers around like a spiritual essence, which gives one peace, and fills the atmosphere with a solemn sweetness like harmonious music of bells.--_Goethe._

Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie.--_George Herbert._

We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff; on the contrary, we may sometimes profitably receive a bushel of chaff for the few grains of truth it may contain.--_Dean Stanley._

The first great work is that yourself may to yourself be true.--_Roscommon._

In troubled water you can scarce see your face, or see it very little, till the water be quiet and stand still: so in troubled times you can see little truth; when times are quiet and settled, then truth appears.--_Selden._

Men are as cold as ice to the truth, hot as fire to falsehood.--_La Fontaine._

The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it.

The evil is only that men will not seek it. Do you go home and search for it.--_Mencius._

Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of will than of habit; and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit.--_Ruskin._

Forgetting that the only eternal part for man to act is man, and that the only immutable greatness is truth.--_Lamartine._

Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.--_Joubert._

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

The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.--_Cowper._

Blunt truths make more mischief than nice falsehoods do.--_Pope._

Truth has rough flavors if we bite through.--_George Eliot._

Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fas.h.i.+on for fear it should burn us.--_Goethe._

All truths are not to be repeated, still it is well to hear them.--_Mme.

du Deffaud._

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always avenges itself.--_Auerbach._

Nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor const.i.tution, can be final. Truth alone is final.--_Charles Sumner._

Verity is nudity.--_Alfred de Musset._

~Twilight.~--Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and all is gray.--_Byron._

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon, like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape.--_Longfellow._

Twilight gray hath in her sober livery all things clad.--_Milton._

The day is done; and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver!--_Longfellow._

The weary sun hath made a golden set, and, by the bright track of his fiery car, gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.--_Shakespeare._

U.

~Ugliness.~--I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was always ugly, and with a woman, that is half the battle.--_Heinrich Heine._

Ugliness, after virtue, is the best guardian of a young woman.--_Mme. de Genlis._

~Understanding.~--The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.--_Bacon._

In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power of perceiving and conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility; the power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing them into wholes, according to a law of unity: and in its most comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension.--_Coleridge._

~Unselfishness.~--The essence of true n.o.bility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pa.s.s in, and the beauty of great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.--_Froude._

~Uprightness.~--To redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee. Solely over one man therein thou hast quite absolute control. Him redeem, him make honest.--_Thomas Carlyle._

~Urbanity.~--Poor wine at the table of a rich host is an insult without an apology. Urbanity ushers in water that needs no apology, and gives a zest to the worst vintage.--_Zimmermann._

~Usefulness.~--Nothing in this world is so good as usefulness. It binds your fellow-creatures to you, and you to them; it tends to the improvement of your own character; and it gives you a real importance in society, much beyond what any artificial station can bestow.--_Sir B. C.

Brodie._

On the day of his death, in his eightieth year, Elliott, "the Apostle of the Indians," was found teaching an Indian child at his bed-side. "Why not rest from your labors now?" asked a friend. "Because," replied the venerable man, "I have prayed G.o.d to render me useful in my sphere, and He has heard my prayers; for now that I can no longer preach, He leaves me strength enough to teach this poor child the alphabet."--_Rev. J.

Chaplin._

There is but one virtue--the eternal sacrifice of self.--_George Sand._

V.

~Valentine.~--Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, a.s.suredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.--_Charles Lamb._

The fourteenth of February is a day sacred to St. Valentine! It was a very odd notion, alluded to by Shakespeare, that on this day birds begin to couple; hence, perhaps, arose the custom of sending on this day letters containing professions of love and affection.--_Noah Webster._

~Valor.~--Valor gives awe, and promises protection to those who want heart or strength to defend themselves. This makes the authority of men among women, and that of a master buck in a numerous herd.--_Sir W. Temple._

How strangely high endeavors may be blessed, where piety and valor jointly go.--_Dryden._

Those who believe that the praises which arise from valor are superior to those which proceed from any other virtues have not considered.--_Dryden._

~Vanity.~--Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.--_Bible._

Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.--_George Eliot._

One of the few things I have always most wondered at is, that there should be any such thing as human vanity. If I had any, I had enough to mortify it a few days ago; for I lost my mind for a whole day.--_Pope._

Greater mischiefs happen often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.--_Burke._

It is vanity which makes the rake at twenty, the worldly man at forty, and the retired man at sixty. We are apt to think that best in general for which we find ourselves best fitted in particular.--_Pope._

O frail estate of human things.--_Dryden._