Pearls of Thought

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 water. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Temptation.– No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted. —George Eliot.

Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension. —Horace Mann.

Most confidence has still most cause to doubt. —Dryden.

It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of, for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in the field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and camp-fires of prayer. —Chapin.

Love cries victory when the tears of a woman become the sole defense of her virtue. —La Fontaine.

When devils will their blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows. —Shakespeare.

The devil tempts us not: it is we tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity. —George Eliot.

Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare. —Dryden.

There are times when it would seem as if God fished with a line, and the devil with a net. —Madame Swetchine.

Tenderness.– When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. —George Eliot.

Theatre.– A man who enters the theatre is immediately struck with the view of so great a multitude, participating of one common amusement; and experiences, from their very aspect, a superior sensibility or disposition of being affected with every sentiment which he shares with his fellow-creatures. —Hume.

The theatre has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much it is to be wished that the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds! —Goethe.

Theories.– Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that were of no use; but puzzle their thoughts, and lose themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. —Sherlock.

Metaphysicians can unsettle things, but they can erect nothing. They can pull down a church, but they cannot build a hovel. —Cecil.

Thought.– I have asked several men what passes in their minds when they are thinking, and I could never find any man who could think for two minutes together. Everybody has seemed to admit that it was a perpetual deviation from a particular path, and a perpetual return to it; which, imperfect as the operation is, is the only method in which we can operate with our minds to carry on any process of thought. —Sydney Smith.

A delicate thought is a flower of the mind. —Rollin.

Earnest men never think in vain though their thoughts may be errors. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture. —Samuel Smiles.

Thoughts shut up want air, and spoil like bales unopened to the sun. —Young.

Good thoughts are blessed guests, and should be heartily welcomed, well fed, and much sought after. Like rose leaves, they give out a sweet smell if laid up in the jar of memory. —Spurgeon.

Thought is invisible nature – nature is invisible thought. —Heinrich Heine.

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them, it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. —George Eliot.

Wherever a great mind utters its thoughts, – there is Golgotha. —Heinrich Heine.

"Give me," said Herder to his son, as he lay in the parched weariness of his last illness, "give me a great thought, that I may quicken myself with it." —Richter.

You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin. —Sheridan.

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it. —Joubert.

Many men's thoughts are not acorns, but merely pebbles. —Charles Buxton.

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection. —Emerson.

Threats.– Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. —Colton.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no. —Emerson.

Time.– Time's abyss, the common grave of all. —Dryden.

Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day. —Shakespeare.

Time makes more converts than reason. —Thomas Paine.

Time stoops to no man's lure. —Swinburne.

Time is the wisest councillor. —Pericles.

Time is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow. —Madame Swetchine.

Time hath often cured the wound which reason failed to heal. —Seneca.

The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good. —Tennyson.

Part with it as with money, sparing; pay no moment but in purchase of its worth; and what its worth! ask death-beds, they can tell. —Young.

The crutch of Time accomplishes more than the club of Hercules. —Balthaser Gracian.

Time is the shower of Danæ; each drop is golden. —Madame Swetchine.

Title.– How impious is the title of "sacred majesty" applied to a worm, who, in the midst of his splendor, is crumbling into dust! —Thomas Paine.

The three highest titles that can be given a man are those of martyr, hero, saint. —Gladstone.

Toleration.– The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision. —George Eliot.

Error tolerates, truth condemns. —Fernan Caballero.

Toleration is the best religion. —Victor Hugo.

Tongue. – When we advance a little into life, we find that the tongue of man creates nearly all the mischief of the world. —Paxton Hood.

Travel.– Rather see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully sluggardized at home wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. —Shakespeare.

Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins. —N. P. Willis.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. —Johnson.

To see the world is to judge the judges. —Joubert.

The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles, and why should not other tourists do the same. —Haliburton.

Treason.– Treason pleases, but not the traitor. —Cervantes.

The man was noble; but with his last attempt he wiped it out; betrayed his country; and his name remains to the ensuing age abhorred. —Shakespeare.

Trifles.– A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. —Shakespeare.

We are not only pleased but turned by a feather. The history of a man is a calendar of straws. If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, said Pascal, in his brilliant way, Antony might have kept the world. —Willmott.

A drop of water is as powerful as a thunderbolt. —Huxley.

Riches may enable us to confer favors; but to confer them with propriety and with grace requires a something that riches cannot give: even trifles may be so bestowed as to cease to be trifles. The citizens of Megara offered the freedom of their city to Alexander; such an offer excited a smile in the countenance of him who had conquered the world; but he received this tribute of their respect with complacency on being informed that they had never offered it to any but to Hercules and himself. —Colton.

There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle. —Emerson.

It is in those acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge. —George Eliot.

The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least. —Madame Swetchine.

Little things console us, because little things afflict us. —Pascal.

Trouble.– Annoyance is man's leaven; the element of movement, without which we would grow mouldy. —Feuchtersleben.

Truth.– Veracity is a plant of Paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls. —George Eliot.

Nothing so beautiful as truth. —Des Cartes.

All high truth is poetry. Take the results of science: they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods of reaching them. —Charles Buxton.

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction. —Thoreau.

Whenever you look at human nature in masses, you find every truth met by a counter truth, and both equally true. —Charles Buxton.

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 fashion 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 constitution, 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 nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass 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 God 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, assuredly, 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 minutiæ 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.