Pearls of Thought

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, and the hero, – the wise, the good, and the great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred and brought to light. —Addison.

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master. —Ben Jonson.

I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards. —Johnson.

The essential difference between a good and a bad education is this, that the former draws on the child to learn by making it sweet to him; the latter drives the child to learn, by making it sour to him if he does not. —Charles Buxton.

Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Education is all paint: it does not alter the nature of the wood that is under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them; and it is sometimes so long before you get to see under the varnish! —Lady Hester Stanhope.

Eloquence.– The poetry of speech. —Byron.

This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration, and awe; that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. —Goldsmith.

Eminence.– I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power from an obscure condition ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The Temple of Honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. —Burke.

Emotions.– All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life. —Richter.

Emotion has no value in the Christian system save as it stands connected with right conduct as the cause of it. Emotion is the bud, not the flower, and never is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of personal morals. —W. H. H. Murray.

There are three orders of emotions: those of pleasure, which refer to the senses; those of harmony, which refer to the mind; and those of happiness, which are the natural result of a union between harmony and pleasure. —Chapone.

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow; whether raised at a puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levelers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Employment.– The wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life worth leading. —Paley.

Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. —Blair.

Emulation.– Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living. —Fuseli.

Enemies.– It is the enemy whom we do not suspect who is the most dangerous. —Rojas.

Energy.– The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another – between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant – is energy, invincible determination; a purpose once formed, and then death or victory. This quality will do anything that is to be done in the world; and no two-legged creature can become a man without it. —Charles Buxton.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. —Napoleon.

To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself. Thus earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. —Samuel Smiles.

Oh! for a forty parson power. —Byron.

Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers. —Sydney Smith.

This world belongs to the energetic. —Emerson.

Enjoyment.– Whatever advantage we snatch beyond the certain portion allotted us by nature is like money spent before it is due, which at the time of regular payment will be missed and regretted. —Johnson.

Ennui.– I have also seen the world, and after long experience have discovered that ennui is our greatest enemy, and remunerative labor our most lasting friend. —Möser.

I am wrapped in dismal thinking. —Shakespeare.

Enthusiasm.– Enthusiasts soon understand each other. —Washington Irving.

Enthusiasm is an evil much less to be dreaded than superstition. Superstition is the disease of nations; enthusiasm, that of individuals: the former grows inveterate by time, the latter is cured by it. —Robert Hall.

Enthusiasm is that temper of mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment. —Warburton.

Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort. It is the inspiration of everything great. Without it, no man is to be feared, and with it none despised. —Bovée.

Enthusiasm is supernatural serenity. —Thoreau.

A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping. —George Eliot.

The insufficient passions of a soul expanding to celestial limits. —Sydney Dobell.

Envy.– A man who hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other. —Lord Bacon.

Pining and sickening at another's joy. —Ovid.

Many passions dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind. —Addison.

He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below. —Byron.

An envious fever of pale and bloodless emulation. —Shakespeare.

Equality.– Whether I be the grandest genius on earth in a single thing, and that single thing earthy, or the poor peasant who, behind his plow, whistles for want of thought, I strongly suspect it will be all one when I pass to the Competitive Examination yonder! On the other side of the grave a Raffael's occupation may be gone as well as a plowman's. —Bulwer-Lytton.

All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man, or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. —Thomas Paine.

By the law of God, given by him to humanity, all men are free, are brothers, and are equals. —Mazzini.

The circle of life is cut up into segments. All lines are equal if they are drawn from the centre and touch the circumference. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Liberty and equality, lovely and sacred words! —Mazzini.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. —Hazlitt.

Equanimity.– A thing often lost, but seldom found. —Mrs. Balfour.

Error.– If those alone who "sowed the wind did reap the whirlwind," it would be well. But the mischief is that the blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale. —Colton.

There is a brotherhood of error as close as the brotherhood of truth. —Argyll.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means, one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies. —George Eliot.

Our follies and errors are the soiled steps to the Grecian temple of our perfection. —Richter.

But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences. —Burke.

Error in itself is always invisible; its nature is the absence of light. —Jacobi.

There is no place where weeds do not grow, and there is no heart where errors are not to be found. —J. S. Knowles.

Our understandings are always liable to error; nature and certainty is very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense. —Marcus Antoninus.

Let error be an infirmity and not a crime. —Castelar.

Errors such as are but acorns in our younger brows grow oaks in our older heads, and become inflexible. —Sir Thomas Browne.

Erudition.– 'Tis of great importance to the honor of learning that men of business should know erudition is not like a lark, which flies high, and delights in nothing but singing; but that 't is rather like a hawk, which soars aloft indeed, but can stoop when she finds it convenient, and seize her prey. —Bacon.

Estimation.– A life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, – by deeds, not years. —Sheridan.

To judge of the real importance of an individual, one should think of the effect his death would produce. —Léves.

Eternity.– Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance. —Addison.

Eternity is a negative idea clothed with a positive name. It supposes in that to which it is applied a present existence; and is the negation of a beginning or of an end of that existence. —Paley.

Etiquette.– Whoever pays a visit that is not desired, or talks longer than the listener is willing to attend, is guilty of an injury that he cannot repair, and takes away that which he cannot give. —Johnson.

The forms required by good breeding, or prescribed by authority, are to be observed in social or official life. —Prescott.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety; it treats little things as little things, and is not hurt by them. —Fénelon.

The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends. —Emerson.

Events.– Man reconciles himself to almost any event however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling; for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of Heaven. —Humboldt.

There can be no peace in human life without the contempt of all events. He that troubles his head with drawing consequences from mere contingencies shall never be at rest. —L'Estrange.

Evil.– Evil is in antagonism with the entire creation. —Zschokke.

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope; and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of wisdom and love. —Channing.

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. —Bible.

If we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison. —Locke.

Not one false man but does uncountable evil. —Carlyle.

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still, it brings forth evil. —Coleridge.

The truly virtuous do not easily credit evil that is told them of their neighbors; for if others may do amiss, then may these also speak amiss: man is frail, and prone to evil, and therefore may soon fail in words. —Jeremy Taylor.

Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us. —Rousseau.

"One soweth, and another reapeth," is a verity that applies to evil as well as good. —George Eliot.

If you believe in evil, you have done evil. —A. de Musset.

Example.– We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live. —Joubert.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. —Shakespeare.

Every great example takes hold of us with the authority of a miracle, and says to us: "If ye had but faith, ye could also be able to do the things which I do." —Jacobi.

Excellence.– Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity. —Aikin.

Excelsior.– Man's life is in the impulse of elevation to something higher. —Jacobi.

Excess.– Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance or too much of proximity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long and too short a discourse obscures our knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us. —Pascal.

O fleeting joys of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes. —Milton.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. —Plato.

Excitement.– There is always something interesting and beautiful about a universal popular excitement of a generous character, let the object of it be what it may. The great desiring heart of man, surging with one strong, sympathetic swell, even though it be to break on the beach of life and fall backwards, leaving the sands as barren as before, has yet a meaning and a power in its restlessness with which I must deeply sympathize. —Mrs. Stowe.

Violent excitement exhausts the mind, and leaves it withered and sterile. —Fénelon.

The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. —Thoreau.

This is so engraven on our nature that it may be regarded as an appetite. Like all other appetites, it is not sinful, unless indulged unlawfully, or to excess. —Dr. Guthrie.

Excuse.– Of vain things, excuses are the vainest. —Charles Buxton.

Expectation.– 'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear; heaven were not heaven, if we knew what it were. —Suckling.

It may be proper for all to remember that they ought not to raise expectations which it is not in their power to satisfy; and that it is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke. —Johnson.

Expediency.– When private virtue is hazarded upon the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre. —Chapin.

Men in responsible situations cannot, like those in private life, be governed solely by the dictates of their own inclinations, or by such motives as can only affect themselves. —Washington.

Experience.– Life consists in the alternate process of learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to learn. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Experience, the shroud of illusions. —De Finod.

To have a true idea of man, or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once. —Taine.

What we learn with pleasure we never forget. —Alfred Mercier.

Who would venture upon the journey of life, if compelled to begin it at the end? —Mme. de Maintenon.

Experience is the extract of suffering. —Arthur Helps.

Every generous illusion adds a wrinkle in vanishing. Experience is the successive disenchantment of the things of life. It is reason enriched by the spoils of the heart. —J. Petit Senn.

Extravagance.– Expenses are not rectilinear, but circular. Every inch you add to the diameter adds three to the circumference. —Charles Buxton.

Extremes.– Extremes are dangerous; a middle estate is safest; as a middle temper of the sea, between a still calm and a violent tempest, is most helpful to convey the mariner to his haven. —Swinnock.

Superlatives are diminutives, and weaken. —Emerson.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them. —Pascal.

Eye.– Stabbed with a white wench's black eye. —Shakespeare.

The eyes of a man are of no use without the observing power. Telescopes and microscopes are cunning contrivances, but they cannot see of themselves. —Paxton Hood.

Ladies, whose bright eyes rain influence. —Milton.

Where is any author in the world teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? —Shakespeare.

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent. —Shakespeare.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. —Tennyson.

The eyes have one language everywhere. —George Herbert.

Glances are the first billets-doux of love. —Ninon de L'Enclos.