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

nothing can be concluded in favor of any nation upon whom it is bestowed.--_Atterbury._

He that would relish success to purpose should keep his passion cool, and his expectation low.--_Jeremy Collier._

The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit,--that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.--_Charles Buxton._

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.--_Longfellow._

Nothing can seem foul to those that win.--_Shakespeare._

All the proud virtue of this vaunting world fawns on success and power, however acquired.--_Thomson._

A successful career has been full of blunders.--_Charles Buxton._

The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who, early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Thus, indeed, even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

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 constitution 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._

~Superstition.~--A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel.--_George Eliot._

Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.--_Seneca._

Every inordination of religion that is not in defect is properly called superstition.--_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._

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable.--_Joubert._

It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made; an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions 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 superstitious 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 suretyship 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.--_Thoreau._

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 circumstance and opinion.--_George Eliot._

Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion 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 surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses 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 relishing 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 appetite 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._

~Teaching.~--Count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.--_Luther._

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Tears.~--The overflow of a softened heart.--_Madame Swetchine._

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.--_Bible._

In woman's eye the unanswerable tear.--_Byron._

Blest tears of soul-felt penitence.--_Moore._

God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.--_Beecher._

The kind oblation of a falling tear.--_Dryden._

A penitent's tear is an undeniable ambassador, and never returns from the throne of grace unsatisfied.--_Spencer._

Fate and the dooming gods are deaf to tears.--_Dryden._

We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears, a power which he has in common with the meanest onion.--_Heinrich Heine._

Her tears her only eloquence.--_Rogers._

Eye-offending brine.--_Shakespeare._

The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal.--_Daniel Webster._

All my mother came into mine eyes, and gave me up to tears.--_Shakespeare._

The tear that is wiped with a little address may be followed, perhaps, by a smile.--_Cowper._

Virtue is the daughter of Religion. Her sole treasure is her tears.--_Madame Swetchine._

Nothing dries sooner than a tear.--_George Herbert._

My plenteous joys, wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow.--_Shakespeare._

Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew.--_Dryden._

Tears are sometimes the happiest smiles of love.--_Stendhal._

~Tediousness.~--The sin of excessive length.--_Shirley._

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.--_Shakespeare._

~Teeth.~--Teeth like falling snow for white.--~Cowley.~

Such a pearly row of teeth that sovereignty would have pawned her jewels for them.--_Sterne._

~Temperance.~--Temperance puts wood on the fire, meal in the barrel, flour in the tub, money in the purse, credit in the country, contentment in the house, clothes on the back, and vigor in the body.--_Franklin._

I consider the temperance cause the foundation of all social and political reform.--_Cobden._

If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail.--_Horace Mann._

Temperance to be a virtue must be free and not forced. Virtue may be defended, as vice may be withstood, by a statute, but no virtue is or can be created by a law, any more than by a battering ram a temple or obelisk can be reared.--_Bartol._

If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.--_Sydney Smith._

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.--_Voltaire._

He who would keep himself to himself should imitate the dumb animals, and drink