Aristocracy.– And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who. —De Foe.
What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier? —Walter Scott.
If in an aristocracy the people be virtuous, they will enjoy very nearly the same happiness as in a popular government, and the state will become powerful. —Montesquieu.
An aristocracy is the true, the only support of a monarchy. Without it the State is a vessel without a rudder – a balloon in the air. A true aristocracy, however, must be ancient. Therein consists its real force, – its talismanic charm. —Napoleon.
I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. —Richard Rumbold.
Armor.– The best armor is to keep out of gunshot. —Lord Bacon.
Our armor all is strong, our cause the best; then reason wills our hearts should be as good. —Shakespeare.
Art.– Rules may teach us not to raise the arms above the head; but if passion carries them, it will be well done: passion knows more than art. —Baron.
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the underworkman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master. —Hume.
The mission of art is to represent nature; not to imitate her. —W. M. Hunt.
True art is not the caprice of this or that individual, it is a solemn page either of history or prophecy; and when, as always in Dante and occasionally in Byron, it combines and harmonizes this double mission, it reaches the highest summit of power. —Mazzini.
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. —Schiller.
Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature – takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, namely, the mind and the soul of man. —Bulwer-Lytton.
The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. —Schopenhaufer.
He who seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius, as he must needs paint for other minds and not for his own. —Washington Allston.
In art, form is everything; matter, nothing. —Heinrich Heine.
Strange thing art, especially music. Out of an art a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile, at best a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and, unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, an humble, reverent visitor. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Art does not imitate, but interpret. —Mazzini.
The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. —Heinrich Heine.
In art there is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste. —Bruyère.
Never judge a work of art by its defects. —Washington Allston.
Asceticism.– I recommend no sour ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fibre too much, nor a passion too many. I would steal no violet from the young maiden's bosom; rather would I fill her arms with more fragrant roses. But a life merely of pleasure, or chiefly of pleasure, is always a poor and worthless life, not worth the living; always unsatisfactory in its course, always miserable in its end. —Theodore Parker.
In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell. —Byron.
Three forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake – as supposed – of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester. —Ruskin.
Aspiration.– The negro king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the poor African; for every man is but another negro king, and would like to appear in a color different from that with which Fate has bedaubed him. —Heinrich Heine.
There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that – to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. —George Eliot.
The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it. —Quarles.
There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless soul, like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! —Chapin.
Oh for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. —Shakespeare.
The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high. —Thoreau.
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. —George Eliot.
Associates.– Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he makes his wings shorter. —Bacon.
Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shall enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there. —Quarles.
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze. —Diogenes.
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant and noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfactory and unsafe. —Landor.
Those who are unacquainted with the world take pleasure in the intimacy of great men; those who are wiser dread the consequences. —Horace.
Atheism.– By burning an atheist, you have lent importance to that which was absurd, interest to that which was forbidding, light to that which was the essence of darkness. For atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction. —Colton.
One of the most daring beings in creation, a contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying his existence. —John Foster.
Authority.– Reasons of things are rather to be taken by weight than tale. —Jeremy Collier.
The world is ruled by the subordinates, not by their chiefs. —Charles Buxton.
Authors.– Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect. The second have a much longer duration. But the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time. —Schopenhaufer.
Satire lies about men of letters during their lives, and eulogy after their death. —Voltaire.
It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine. It is for the same reason that La Fontaine is held in such high esteem among the French. It is not for his worth as a poet, but for the greatness of his character which obtrudes in his writings. —Goethe.
Choose an author as you choose a friend. —Roscommon.
Herder and Schiller both in their youth intended to study as surgeons, but Destiny said: "No, there are deeper wounds than those of the body, – heal the deeper!" and they wrote. —Richter.
A woman who writes commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and decreases the number of women. —Alphonse Karr.
Thanks and honor to the glorious masters of the pen. —Hood.
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down. —Colton.
Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are, the turbid looks most profound. —Landor.
When we look back upon human records, how the eye settles upon writers as the main landmarks of the past. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Autumn.– Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness. —Keats.
The Sabbath of the year. —Logan.
Avarice.– Though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. —Thomas Paine.
Avarice is more unlovely than mischievous. —Landor.
The German poet observes that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! —Bulwer-Lytton.
Worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world than any mortal drug. —Shakespeare.
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. —Johnson.
B
Babblers.– Who think too little, and who talk too much. —Dryden.
They always talk who never think. —Prior.
Talkers are no good doers. —Shakespeare.
Babe.– It is curious to see how a self-willed, haughty girl, who sets her father and mother and all at defiance, and can't be managed by anybody, at once finds her master in a baby. Her sister's child will strike the rock and set all her affections flowing. —Charles Buxton.
Bargain.– What is the disposition which makes men rejoice in good bargains? There are few people who will not be benefited by pondering over the morals of shopping. —Beecher.
A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer's judgment. —Pliny.
Bashfulness.– Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. —Johnson.
Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; 'tis therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort. —Bacon.
Beauty.– The beautiful is always severe. —Ségur.
For converse among men, beautiful persons have less need of the mind's commending qualities. Beauty in itself is such a silent orator, that it is ever pleading for respect and liking, and, by the eyes of others is ever sending to their hearts for love. Yet even this hath this inconvenience in it – that it makes its possessor neglect the furnishing of the mind with nobleness. Nay, it oftentimes is a cause that the mind is ill. —Feltham.
Man has still more desire for beauty than knowledge of it; hence the caprices of the world. —X. Doudan.
No better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; no true beauty without the signature of these graces in the very countenance. —John Ray.
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty. —Burke.
I am of opinion that there is nothing so beautiful but that there is something still more beautiful, of which this is the mere image and expression, – a something which can neither be perceived by the eyes, the ears, nor any of the senses; we comprehend it merely in the imagination. —Cicero.
A lovely girl is above all rank. —Charles Buxton.
There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an indefinable, and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. —Tuckerman.
Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away. —Méré.
In ourselves, rather than in material nature, lie the true source and life of the beautiful. The human soul is the sun which diffuses light on every side, investing creation with its lovely hues, and calling forth the poetic element that lies hidden in every existing thing. —Mazzini.
Beauty is God's handwriting, a wayside sacrament. —Milton.
Beauty deceives women in making them establish on an ephemeral power the pretensions of a whole life. —Bignicout.
If there is a fruit that can be eaten raw, it is beauty. —Alphonse Karr.
Those critics who, in modern times, have the most thoughtfully analyzed the laws of æsthetic beauty, concur in maintaining that the real truthfulness of all works of imagination – sculpture, painting, written fiction – is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent the positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth. —Bulwer-Lytton.
An outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. —Gibbon.
It is impossible that beauty should ever distinctly apprehend itself. —Goethe.
Bed.– The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. —Colton.
What a delightful thing rest is! The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world. —Napoleon.
Beggars.– He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. —Lamb.
Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself. —Goldsmith.
Benevolence.– There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being, replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures. —Fielding.
Genuine benevolence is not stationary but peripatetic. It goeth about doing good. —Nevins.
It is an argument of a candid, ingenuous mind to delight in the good name and commendations of others; to pass by their defects and take notice of their virtues; and to speak or hear willingly of the latter; for in this indeed you may be little less guilty than the evil speaker, in taking pleasure in evil, though you speak it not. —Leighton.
The root of all benevolent actions is filial piety and fraternal love. —Confucius.
True benevolence is to love all men. Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness. —Confucius.
It is in contemplating man at a distance that we become benevolent. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Bible.– As those wines which flow from the first treading of the grapes are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the Scriptures and are not wrung into controversies and commonplaces. —Bacon.
They who are not induced to believe and live as they ought by those discoveries which God hath made in Scripture, would stand out against any evidence whatever; even that of a messenger sent express from the other world. —Atterbury.
But what is meant, after all, by uneducated, in a time when books have come into the world – come to be household furniture in every habitation of the civilized world? In the poorest cottage are books – is one book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him. —Carlyle.
A stream where alike the elephant may swim and the lamb may wade. —Gregory the Great.
All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high, and contained in the sacred writings. —Herschel.
I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a book which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence. —Landor.
Bigotry.– A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power. —Boileau.
Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenhoeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer. —Colton.
A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side. —Addison.
The worst of mad men is a saint run mad. —Pope.
Biography.– As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. —Plutarch.
Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels – teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action for their own and the world's good. —Samuel Smiles.
It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people, who have lived with a man, know what to remark about him. —Johnson.
History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. —Johnson.
Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skillful hand to construct the skeleton. —Willmott.
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days. —Plutarch.
Birth.– Noble in appearance, but this is mere outside; many noble born are base. —Euripides.
Blessings.– The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. —Charles Lamb.
Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires. —St. Augustine.
We mistake the gratuitous blessings of Heaven for the fruits of our own industry. —L'Estrange.
Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just. —Plato.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight! —Young.
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many: not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. —Charles Dickens.
Blush.– The ambiguous livery worn alike by modesty and shame. —Mrs. Balfour.
I have mark'd a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face; a thousand innocent shames, in angel whiteness, bear away those blushes. —Shakespeare.
The glow of the angel in woman. —Mrs. Balfour.
Such blushes as adorn the ruddy welkin or the purple morn. —Ovid.
Luminous escapes of thought. —Moore.
Blustering.– Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field – that, of course, they are many in number, – or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour. —Burke.
There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than a way of braying. —L'Estrange.
Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them. —George Eliot.
Boasting.– Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves with less noise. —W. Secker.
With all his tumid boasts, he's like the sword-fish, who only wears his weapon in his mouth. —Madden.
Every braggart shall be found an ass. —Shakespeare.
Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred. —Charles Buxton.
Boldness.– Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall. —Smollett.
Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more. —Lemesles.
Bondage.– The iron chain and the silken cord, both equally are bonds. —Schiller.
Books.– If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! —Thackeray.
When a new book comes out I read an old one. —Rogers.
Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter. —Paxton Hood.
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. —Thoreau.
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, – it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. —Beecher.
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. —Fénelon.
We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. —Plutarch.
To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor. —Pope.
The medicine of the mind. —Diodorus.
Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof. —Channing.
Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs. —George Eliot.
Bores.– I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer's noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. —Lamb.
These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men. —Dryden.
If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of. —Cowley.
The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril! —Madame Swetchine.
Borrowing.– You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world's goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are. —Heinrich Heine.
According to the security you offer to her, Fortune makes her loans easy or ruinous. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Bravery.– True bravery is shown by performing without witnesses what one might be capable of doing before all the world. —Rochefoucauld.
'Tis late before the brave despair. —Thompson.
The bravest men are subject most to chance. —Dryden.
The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes. —Byron.
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors. —George Eliot.
Brevity.– To make pleasures pleasant shorten them. —Charles Buxton.
Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress? —Johnson.
A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. —Feltham.
I saw one excellency was within my reach – it was brevity, and I determined to obtain it. —Jay.
Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. —Southey.
Concentration alone conquers. —Charles Buxton.
The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit. —Alfred Bougeart.
Oratory, like the Drama, abhors lengthiness; like the Drama, it must be kept doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. —Bulwer-Lytton.
The fewer words the better prayer. —Luther.
Business.– Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it. —Tacitus.