Pearls of Thought by Maturin Murray Ballou (inspirational books to read .txt) 📕

love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.--_Montesquieu._

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars.--_Macaulay._

Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.--_Shakespeare._

The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet.--_Coleridge._

~Reason.~--Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.--_George Herbert._

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.--_Voltaire._

If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.--_Shakespeare._

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.--_Bolingbroke._

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.--_Joubert._

I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so, because I think him so.--_Shakespeare._

Reason 's progressive; instinct is complete: swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.--_Young._

Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near,--sees nothing that's above her.--_Quarles._

How can finite grasp infinity?--_Dryden._

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.--_Goethe._

Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart.--_Heinrich Heine._

Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.--_Shakespeare._

Reason may cure illusions but not suffering.--_Alfred de Musset._

~Reciprocity.~--There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word is _reciprocity_. What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.--_Confucius._

~Reconciliation.~--It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.--_Owen Feltham._

~Rectitude.~--The great high-road of human welfare lies along the highway of steadfast well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.--_Samuel Smiles._

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.--_Thoreau._

No man can do right unless he is good, wise, and strong. What wonder we fail?--_Charles Buxton._

~Refinement.~--Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.--_Beecher._

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.--_Beecher._

~Reflection.~--We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.--_Sydney Smith._

~Reform.~--We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old--reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.--_Emerson._

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.--_Milton._

Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, to curb desire, to break the stubborn will, and work a second nature in the soul.--_Rowe._

They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!--_Shakespeare._

~Regret.~--Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache?--_Richter._

~Religion.~--Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.--_Emerson._

I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy!--_Sydney Smith._

Nowhere would there be consolation if religion were not.--_Jacobi._

Monopolies are just as injurious to religion as to trade. With competition religions preserve their strength, but they will never again flourish in their original glory until religious freedom, or, in other words, free trade among the gods, is introduced.--_Heinrich Heine._

A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force, and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair.--_Channing._

Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded.--_J. Petit Senn._

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.--_Shelley._

The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a certain range, subject to wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel.--_Gladstone._

The best religion is the most tolerant.--_Emile de Girardin._

~Remembrance.~--The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.--_Cato._

Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.--_Boufflers._

~Remorse.~--Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.--_Joubert._

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.--_Rousseau._

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.--_Shakespeare._

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

~Repartee.~--The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.--_Moliere._

~Repentance.~---Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.--_Sterling._

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.--_Quarles._

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.--_Moore._

Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away?--_Anna Cora Ritchie._

Repentance is second innocence.--_De Bonald._

~Repose.~--Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.--_Sydney Smith._

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.--_Plutarch._

~Reproach.~--Few love to hear the sins they love to act.--_Shakespeare._

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.--_Mrs. Balfour._

~Republic.~--Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.--_Walpole._

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion, might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."--_Heinrich Heine._

At twenty, every one is republican.--_Lamartine._

~Reputation.~--Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.--_Sydney Smith._

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.--_Tacitus._

Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.--_Washington Allston._

My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.--_Bacon._

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.--_Johnson._

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.--_Latena._

~Request.~--No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.--_Caesar._

He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.--_Lavater._

~Resignation.~--O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.--_Fenelon._

Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.--_Mountford._

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal thanks.--_Shakespeare._

Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pass that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.--_Robert Collyer._

Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.--_Thomson._

"My will, not thine, be done," turned Paradise into a desert. "Thy will, not mine, be done," turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.--_Pressense._

Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.--_Dr. Vinet._

~Responsibility.~--Responsibility educates.--_Wendell Phillips._

~Restlessness.~--The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity--a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.--_Goethe._

Always driven towards new shores, or carried hence without hope of return, shall we never, on the ocean of age cast anchor for even a day?--_Lamartine._

~Retribution.~--Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.--_George Eliot._

"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--_George Eliot._

~Revenge.~--Revenge at first, though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils.--_Milton._

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.--_Colton._

There are some professed Christians who would gladly burn their enemies, but yet who forgive them merely because it is heaping coals of fire on their heads.--_F. A. Durivage._

~Revery.~--In that sweet mood when pleasant