Pearls of Thought Part 59

If he who has little wit needs a master to inform his stupidity, he who has much frequently needs ten to keep in check his worldly wisdom, which might otherwise, like a high-mettled charger, toss him to the ground.--_Scriver._

To place wit above sense is to place superfluity above utility.--_Madame de Maintenon._

~Woe.~--No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.--_Walter Scott._

Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.--_Herrick._

So many miseries have crazed my voice, that my woe-wearied tongue is still.--_Shakespeare._

~Woman.~--Who does know the bent of woman's fantasy?--_Spenser._

Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.--_Heinrich Heine._

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.--_George Eliot._

To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her s.e.x.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

They never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top.--_Bishop Whately._

The woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies.

But she performs her part best who can take freely, of her own choice, the alien to her heart, can bear and foster it with sincerity and love.--_Richter._

G.o.d has placed the genius of women in their hearts; because the works of this genius are always works of love.--_Lamartine._

Women for the most part do not love us. They do not choose a man because they love him, but because it pleases them to be loved by him. They love love of all things in the world, but there are very few men whom they love personally.--_Alphonse Karr._

Woman is the Sunday of man; not his repose only, but his joy; the salt of his life.--_Michelet._

Women see through and through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.--_Charles Buxton._

It goes far to reconciling me to being a woman when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one.--_Lady Montague._

Men are women's playthings; woman is the devil's.--_Victor Hugo._

Sing of the nature of woman, and the song shall be surely full of variety,--old crotchets and most sweet closes,--it shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly,--one in all, and all in one!--_Beaumont._

Her step is music and her voice is song.--_Bailey._

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.--_Michelet._

Woman, sister! there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant, not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you can create yourselves into any of these grand creators, why have you not?--_De Quincey._

There are three things a wise man will not trust: the wind, the suns.h.i.+ne of an April day, and woman's plighted faith.--_Southey._

Woman is mistress of the art of completely embittering the life of the person on whom she depends.--_Goethe._

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.--_Colton._

Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin s.h.i.+ne through.--_Ruffini._

There are female women, and there are male women.--_Charles Buxton._

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!--_George Eliot._

Men at most differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and h.e.l.l.--_Tennyson._

Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day.--_a.r.s.ene Houssaye._

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.--_George Eliot._

There remains in the faces of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later, an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.--_Richter._

Women see without looking; their husbands often look without seeing.--_Louis Desnoyeas._

She was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood; at that age when, if ever, angels be for G.o.d's good purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers.

Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful, that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions.--_d.i.c.kens._

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.--_Lamartine._

There is something still more to be dreaded than a Jesuit, and that is a Jesuitess.--_Eugene Sue._

The honor of woman is badly guarded when it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is honest who does not wish to be.--_Adrian Dupuy._

~Words.~--There are words which sever hearts more than sharp swords; there are words, the point of which sting the heart through the course of a whole life.--_Fredrika Bremer._

Words are often everywhere as the minute-hands of the soul, more important than even the hour-hands of action.--_Richter._

"The last word" is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-sh.e.l.l.--_Douglas Jerrold._

Words, like gla.s.s, darken whatever they do not help us to see.--_Joubert._

If we use common words on a great occasion they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.--_George Eliot._

Words are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.--_Colton._

~World.~--The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.--_Horace Walpole._

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine.--_Goldsmith._

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.--_Chamfort._

Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.--_Shakespeare._

~Wors.h.i.+p.~--Wors.h.i.+p as though the Deity were present. If my mind is not engaged in my wors.h.i.+p, it is as though I wors.h.i.+ped not.--_Confucius._

~Writing.~--Writing, after all, is a cold and coa.r.s.e interpreter of thought. How much of the imagination, how much of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it in words! Man made language and G.o.d the genius.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

We must write as Homer wrote, not what he wrote.--_Theophile Vian._