Various - Many Thoughts of Many Minds
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Various >> Many Thoughts of Many Minds
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No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of
truth.--BACON.
Nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final.
Truth alone is final.--CHARLES SUMNER.
The greatest friend of truth is time; her greatest enemy is prejudice;
and her constant companion is humility.--COLTON.
I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could
be trusted in matters of importance.--PALEY.
Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth.--HORACE
MANN.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication,
a duty.--MME. DE STAEL.
Truth is one;
And, in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.
--WHITTIER.
Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither
in a straight line.--TILLOTSON.
The expression of truth is simplicity.--SENECA.
What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and
justice.--DEMOSTHENES.
Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration
of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which
is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the
presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it,
is the sovereign good of human nature.--WHITTIER.
The firmest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the
real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed, but where
they speak and think and do what they must, because they are so and
not otherwise.--EMERSON.
UNHAPPINESS.--The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself
to be so.--HENRY HOME.
A perverse temper and fretful disposition will, wherever they prevail
render any state of life whatsoever unhappy.--CICERO.
What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so
much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men,
and then they choose to call themselves miserable.--GOETHE.
VANITY.--All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with
himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which
to others is indifferent.--AUERBACH.
There is no limit to the vanity of this world. Each spoke in the wheel
thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.--H.W. SHAW.
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.--POPE.
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him
to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins
the character he is so industrious to advance by it.--ADDISON.
An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in
censure; but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his
conversation.--LA BRUYERE.
Vanity is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible
vices--the vices of affectation and common lying.--ADAM SMITH.
Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor
with all others.--SHAKESPEARE.
There is no restraining men's tongues or pens when charged with a
little vanity.--WASHINGTON.
Vanity makes men ridiculous, pride odious and ambition terrible.--STEELE.
It is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others intolerable to
us.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag
of its vices.--H.W. SHAW.
Extreme vanity sometimes hides under the garb of ultra modesty.
--MRS. JAMESON.
She neglects her heart who too closely studies her glass.--LAVATER.
Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity.--PSALM 39:5.
VICE.--Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that
men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.--COLTON.
The vicious obey their passions, as slaves do their masters.--DIOGENES.
A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.--PLUTARCH.
Vice stings us, even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us, even in
our pains.--COLTON.
One sin another doth provoke.--SHAKESPEARE.
What maintains one vice would bring up two children.--FRANKLIN.
Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in
this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and
the other world.--DR. WATTS.
He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice
should go a little farther, and try to plant in a virtue in its place,
otherwise he will have his labor to renew.--COLTON.
Vices that are familiar we pardon, and only new ones reprehend.
--PUBLIUS SYRUS.
This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.--CHAPIN.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
--POPE.
Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but
forbidden because they are hurtful.--FRANKLIN.
VIRTUE.--Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.--HELVETIUS.
Virtue alone is sweet society,
It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
And opens you a welcome in them all.
--EMERSON.
The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary
exertions, but by his every-day conduct.--PASCAL.
Virtue consisteth of three parts,--temperance, fortitude, and
justice.--EPICURUS.
Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in
the heavens immortal.--CHILD.
When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as
pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your
life.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our
natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.--SIR P. SIDNEY.
Virtue is everywhere the same, because it comes from God, while
everything else is of men.--VOLTAIRE.
O let us still the secret joy partake,
To follow virtue even for virtue's sake.
--POPE.
Well may your heart believe the truths I tell;
'Tis virtue makes the bliss where'er we dwell.
--COLLINS.
The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no
bulwark of mere morality which some temptation may not overtop, or
undermine and destroy.--SIR P. SIDNEY.
Virtue is not to be considered in the light of mere innocence, or
abstaining from harm; but as the exertion of our faculties in doing
good.--BISHOP BUTLER.
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is virtue's prize.
--POPE.
Live virtuously, my lord, and you cannot die too soon, nor live too
long.--LADY RACHEL RUSSELL.
If you can be well without health, you can be happy without virtue.
--BURKE.
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make happy, not
gold.--BEETHOVEN.
I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it; as
I would be clean for my own sake, though nobody were to see me.
--SHAFTESBURY.
Know then this truth, enough for man to know,
Virtue alone is happiness below.
--POPE.
An effort made with ourselves for the good of others, with the
intention of pleasing God alone.--BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.
Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame,--all these
belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your
love.--COWPER.
Our virtues live upon our incomes; our vices consume our capital.
--J. PETIT-SENN.
Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a
million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed
and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of
little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because
you are neither a hero nor a saint.--BEECHER.
WANT.--How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!--LAVATER.
We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do;
therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real
wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he
does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.--COLTON.
Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied
with everything that nature can command, than we sit down to contrive
artificial appetites.--DR. JOHNSON.
Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known
waste.--SPURGEON.
Constantly choose rather to want less, than to have more.--THOMAS A
KEMPIS.
Every one is the poorer in proportion as he has more wants, and counts
not what he has, but wishes only what he has not.--MANILIUS.
If any one say that he has seen a just man in want of bread, I answer
that it was in some place where there was no other just man.
--ST. CLEMENT.
It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants
are chiefly derived.--FIELDING.
WAR.--War will never yield but to the principles of universal justice
and love; and these have no sure root but in the religion of Jesus
Christ.--CHANNING.
Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.--BEECHER.
Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the
cost of the conflict must be paid.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.
A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory,
because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations
generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.--COLTON.
War is a crime which involves all other crimes.--BROUGHAM.
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of
preserving peace.--WASHINGTON.
War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is righteous sweet is
the smell of powder.--LONGFELLOW.
Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any fondness for
war, and I have never advocated it except as a means of peace.
--U.S. GRANT.
I prefer the hardest terms of peace to the most just war.--C.J. FOX.
Take my word for it, if you had seen but one day of war, you would
pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again.
--WELLINGTON.
War, even in the best state of an army, with all the alleviations of
courtesy and honor, with all the correctives of morality and religion,
is nevertheless so great an evil, that to engage in it without a clear
necessity is a crime of the blackest dye. When the necessity is clear,
it then becomes a crime to shrink from it.--SOUTHEY.
WASTE.--Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how
destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income
is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which
on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It
is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than
another, we cannot tell how.--DR. JOHNSON.
WEALTH.--Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has
little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants
more.--COLTON.
Riches are gotten with pain, kept with care, and lost with grief. The
cares of riches lie heavier upon a good man than the inconveniences of
an honest poverty.--L'ESTRANGE.
Seek not proud wealth; but such as thou mayest get justly, use
soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.--BACON.
Conscience and wealth are not always neighbors.--MASSINGER.
He that will not permit his wealth to do any good to others while he
is living, prevents it from doing any good to himself when he is dead;
and by an egotism that is suicidal, and has a double edge, cuts
himself off from the truest pleasure here, and the highest happiness
hereafter.--COLTON.
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend
it like a gentleman.--COLTON.
The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst
for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and
leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at
all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should
be undone.--EMERSON.
Wealth is not acquired, as many persons suppose, by fortunate
speculations and splendid enterprises, but by the daily practice of
industry, frugality, and economy. He who relies upon these means will
rarely be found destitute, and he who relies upon any other will
generally become bankrupt.--WAYLAND.
There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them,
temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing
them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning
them.--MATTHEW HENRY.
What does competency in the long run mean? It means, to all reasonable
beings, cleanliness of person, decency of dress, courtesy of manners,
opportunities for education, the delights of leisure, and the bliss of
giving.--WHIPPLE.
The way to wealth is as plain as the road to market. It depends
chiefly on two words,--industry and frugality.--FRANKLIN.
Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object
of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high
a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but
the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation
between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which
is the essential thing.--HILLARD.
Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would
be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health,
quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for
them, that the bargain is a loss.--LA BRUYERE.
It is only when the rich are sick, that they fully feel the impotence
of wealth.--COLTON.
To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No--all that's worth a wish--a thought,
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind.
--DR. JOHNSON.
WIFE.--The good wife is none of our dainty dames, who love to appear
in a variety of suits every day new; as if a good gown, like a
stratagem in war, were to be used but once. But our good wife sets up
a sail according to the keel of her husband's estate; and if of high
parentage, she doth not so remember what she was by birth, that she
forgets what she is by match.--FULLER.
All other goods by fortune's hand are given,
A wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.
--POPE.
A good wife is heaven's last, best gift to man,--his gem of many
virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles
his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms
the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy
his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the
softest pillow of his care.--JEREMY TAYLOR.
She is not made to be the admiration of everybody, but the happiness
of one.--BURKE.
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female,
who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial
roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising
in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under
misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast
of adversity.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
Thy wife is a constellation of virtues, she's the moon, and thou art
the man in the moon.--CONGREVE.
For nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
--MILTON.
What is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife;
When friendship, love and peace combine
To stamp the marriage-bond divine?
--COWPER.
O woman! thou knowest the hour when the goodman of the house will
return, when the heat and burden of the day are past; do not let him
at such time, when he is weary with toil and jaded with
discouragement, find upon his coming to his habitation that the foot
which should hasten to meet him is wandering at a distance, that the
soft hand which should wipe the sweat from his brow is knocking at the
door of other houses.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
WISDOM.--It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves.
--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
The clouds may drop down titles and estates, both may seek us; but
wisdom must be sought.--YOUNG.
True wisdom is to know what is best worth knowing, and to do what is
best worth doing.--HUMPHREYS.
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth
understanding: for the merchandise of it is better than the
merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is
more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are
not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and
in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay
hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her.--PROV. 3:13-18.
The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that
of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already.--SIMMS.
Where the eye of pity weep,
And the sway of passion sleeps,
Where the lamp of faith is burning,
And the ray of hope returning,
Where the "still small voice" within
Whispers not of wrath or sin,
Resting with the righteous dead--
Beaming o'er the drooping head--
Comforting the lowly mind,
Wisdom dwelleth--seek and find.
The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the
second, to know that which is true.--LACTANTIUS.
Seek wisdom where it may be found. Seek it in the knowledge of God,
the holy, the just and the merciful God, as revealed to us in the
gospel; of Him who is just, and yet the justifier of them that believe
in Jesus.--ARCHDEACON RAIKES.
Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.
--WORDSWORTH.
He who learns the rules of wisdom, without conforming to them in his
life, is like a man who labored in his fields, but did not sow.--SAADI.
Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
As whole caravans may light their lamps from one candle without
exhausting it, so myriads of tribes may gain wisdom from the great
Book without impoverishing it.--RABBI BEN-AZAI.
Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the
passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the
injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the
ways which lead to tranquillity and peace.--CICERO.
Wisdom consists not in seeing what is directly before us, but in
discerning those things which may come to pass.--TERENCE.
That man strangely mistakes the manner of spirit he is of who knows
not that peaceableness, and gentleness, and mercy, as well as purity,
are inseparable characteristics of the wisdom that is from above; and
that Christian charity ought never to be sacrificed even for the
promotion of evangelical truth.--BISHOP MANT.
So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto
wisdom.--PSALM 90:12.
WIT.--I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.
--MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
Witticisms never are agreeable, which are injurious to others.--FROM
THE LATIN.
Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by
tasteless food; but God has given us wit and flavor and brightness and
laughter and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to
"charm his pained steps over the burning marle."--SYDNEY SMITH.
Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a
comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to.--BISHOP HORNE.
Wit consists in assembling, and putting together with quickness, ideas
in which can be found resemblance and congruity, by which to make up
pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy.--LOCKE.
There is many a man hath more hair than wit.--SHAKESPEARE.
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
--POPE.
Wit does not take the place of knowledge.--VAUVENARGUES.
To place wit before good sense is to place the superfluous before the
necessary.--M. DE MONTLOSIER.
WOMAN.--Honor to women! they twine and weave the roses of heaven into
the life of man; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of
love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish
carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands.
--SCHILLER.
The world was sad!--the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sigh'd--till woman smiled.
--CAMPBELL.
A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is
reflected from a true woman's eyes; for God himself sits behind them.
--J.G. HOLLAND.
O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a
man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and
dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein?--RICHTER.
Seek to be good, but aim not to be great;
A woman's noblest station is retreat;
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight;
Domestic worth,--that shuns too strong a light.
--LORD LYTTLETON.
Nature sent women into the world with this bridal dower of love, for
this reason, that they might be, what their destination is, mothers,
and love children, to whom sacrifices must ever be offered and from
whom none are to be obtained.--RICHTER.
A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her
world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her
avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on
adventure, she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection;
and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of
the heart.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loath'd than an effeminate man.
--SHAKESPEARE.
What's a table richly spread,
Without a woman at its head?
--T. WHARTON.
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
--WALTER SCOTT.
The modest virgin, the prudent wife, or the careful matron, are much
more serviceable in life, than petticoated philosophers, blustering
heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children
happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to
virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romance,
whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their
quiver or their eyes.--GOLDSMITH.
If the heart of a man is depress'd with cares,
The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.
--GAY.
Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity.
--BEECHER.
Not she with trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue;
She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave,
Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.
--E.S. BARRETT.
O loving woman, man's fulfillment, sweet,
Completing him not otherwise complete!
How void and useless the sad remnant left
Were he of her, his nobler part, bereft.
--ABRAHAM COLES.
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak,
and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is
rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils,
and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by
Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man
in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his
nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the
broken heart.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
Women in health are the hope of the nation. Men who exercise a
controlling influence--the master spirits--with a few exceptions, have
had country-born mothers. They transmit to their sons those traits of
character--moral, intellectual, and physical--which give stability to
institutions, and promote order, security, and justice.--DR. J.V.C.
SMITH.
Man has subdued the world, but woman has subdued man. Mind and muscle
have won his victories; love and loveliness have gained hers. No
monarch has been so great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not been
glad to lay his best at the feet of a woman.--GAIL HAMILTON.
American ladies are known abroad for two distinguishing traits
(besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are
their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.--ABBA GOOLD
WOOLSON.
Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman's will?
For if she will, she will, you may depend on't,
And if she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't.
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