Chapter 17
~Self-reliance.~--The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done _for_ men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.--_Samuel Smiles._
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.--_Bovee._
A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.--_Livy._
The supreme fall of falls is this, the first doubt of one's self.--_Countess de Gasparin._
It's right to trust in God; but if you don't stand to your halliards, your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.--_George MacDonald._
The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.--_Emerson._
~Sensibility.~--The wild-flower wreath of feeling, the sunbeam of the heart.--_Halleck._
Sensibility is the power of woman.--_Lavater._
Feeling loves a subdued light.--_Madame Swetchine._
~Sensitiveness.~--Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as a sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.--_George Eliot._
That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.--_Burke._
~Sentiment.~--Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?--_Emerson._
~Separation.~--Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.--_Madame Swetchine._
~Shakespeare.~--There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.--_Heinrich Heine._
Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears.--_T. B. Shaw._
Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.--_Goethe._
In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.--_Coleridge._
No man is too busy to read Shakespeare.--_Charles Buxton._
Shakespeare's personages live and move as if they had just come from the hand of God, with a life that, though manifold, is one, and, though complex, is harmonious.--_Mazzini._
Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child.--_Milton._
And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.--_Campbell._
Shakespeare is one of the best means of culture the world possesses. Whoever is at home in his pages is at home everywhere.--_H. N. Hudson._
His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.--_Emerson._
I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.--_O. W. Holmes._
Whatever other learning he wanted he was master of two books unknown to many profound readers, though books which the last conflagration can alone destroy. I mean the book of Nature and of Man.--_Young._
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.--_Macaulay._
It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.--_Johnson._
The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.--_Keats._
Shame.--Nature's hasty conscience.--_Maria Edgeworth._
Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.--_Goldsmith._
~Ship.~--A prison with the chance of being drowned.--_Johnson._
Cradle of the rude imperious surge.--_Shakespeare._
~Silence.~--The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Give thy thoughts no tongue.--_Shakespeare._
True gladness doth not always speak; joy bred and born but in the tongue is weak.--_Ben Jonson._
I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.--_Zeno._
Silence in times of suffering is the best.--_Dryden._
Silence! coeval with eternity.--_Pope._
Silence is the sanctuary of prudence.--_Balthasar Gracian._
The unspoken word never does harm.--_Kossuth._
Silence is the understanding of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.--_Bonnard._
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.--_George Eliot._
Silence gives consent.--_Goldsmith._
Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.--_Zimmerman._
~Simplicity.~--Simplicity is doubtless a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.--_Madame de Girardin._
Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of Art.--_P. J. Bailey._
The world could not exist if it were not simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.--_Goethe._
The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model, without miracle, without extravagance.--_Montaigne._
There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.--_Pope._
~Sin.~--Original sin is in us like the beard: we are shaved to-day, and look clean, and have a smooth chin; to-morrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. In like manner original sin cannot be extirpated from us; it springs up in us as long as we exist; Nevertheless, we are bound to resist it to our utmost strength, and to cut it down unceasingly.--_Luther._
Sin, in fancy, mothers many an ugly fact.--_Theodore Parker._
There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and sure to one and all.--_Hosea Ballou._
Every man has his devilish minutes.--_Lavater._
Death from sin no power can separate.--_Milton._
Our sins, like to our shadows, when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared. Towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!--_Sir J. Suckling._
'Tis the will that makes the action good or ill.--_Herrick._
Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.--_Sir Walter Scott._
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.--_Shakespeare._
Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.--_Plato._
Sin and her shadow death.--_Milton._
If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do it; and if ye do evil, against yourselves will ye do it.--_Koran._
It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.--_Boileau._
There are sins of omission as well as those of commission.--_Madame Deluzy._
~Sincerity.~--Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.--_Tillotson._
The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.--_Coleridge._
~Skepticism.~--Skepticism is slow suicide.--_Emerson._
~Skill.~--Nobody, however able, can gain the very highest success, except in one line. He may rise above others, but he will fall below himself.--_Charles Buxton._
Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.--_Walter Scott._
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.--_Gibbon._
~Slander.~--Done to death by slanderous tongues.--_Shakespeare._
Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.--_Douglas Jerrold._
Slander lives upon succession, forever housed where it gets possession.--_Shakespeare._
When the absent are spoken of, some will speak gold of them, some silver, some iron, some lead, and some always speak dirt, for they have a natural attraction towards what is evil, and think it shows penetration in them. As a cat watching for mice does not look up though an elephant goes by, so are they so busy mousing for defects, that they let great excellences pass them unnoticed. I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others' faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the devil feels, you do know if you are such an one.--_Beecher._
If parliament were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as sporting on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame as well as game, there are many would thank them for the bill.--_Sheridan._
~Sleep.~--When one asked Alexander how he could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of danger, he told them that _Parmenio_ watched. Oh, how securely may they sleep over whom He watches that never slumbers nor sleeps! "I will," said David, "lay me down and sleep, for thou, Lord, makest me to dwell in safety."--_Venning._
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.--_Shakespeare._
Sleep is no servant of the will; it has caprices of its own; when courted most, it lingers still; when most pursued, 'tis swiftly gone.--_Bowring._
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.--_Bible._
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.--_Alcott._
Night's sepulchre.--_Byron._
Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.--_Donne._
Sleep, to the homeless thou art home; the friendless find in thee a friend.--_Ebenezer Elliott._
The soul shares not the body's rest.--_Maturin._
Our foster nurse of nature is repose.--_Shakespeare._
~Sloth.~--Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.--_Colton._
~Smile.~--A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy--the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby.--_Haliburton._
Smiles are smiles only when the heart pulls the wire.--_Winthrop._
Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.--_Shakespeare._
The smile that was childlike and bland.--_Bret Harte._
A soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.--_Victor Hugo._
~Sneer.~--The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.--_Hazlitt._
~Society.~--If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.--_Lavater._
Formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.--_Byron._
Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.--_Emerson._
We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.--_Chamfort._
Society is the union of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and yet man may remain.--_Montesquieu._
There are four varieties in society; the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.--_Taine._
Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.--_Tuckerman._
Intercourse is the soul of progress.--_Charles Buxton._
One ought to love society if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.--_Zimmermann._
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.--_Madame Roland._
The more I see of men the better I think of animals.--_Tauler._
~Soldier.~--A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.--_Shakespeare._
Policy goes beyond strength, and contrivance before action; hence it is that direction is left to the commander, execution to the soldier, who is not to ask Why? but to do what he is commanded.--_Xenophon._
Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.--_Schiller._
Soldiers looked at as they ought to be: they are to the world as poppies to corn fields.--_Douglas Jerrold._
~Solitude.~--Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.--_Johnson._
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.--_Addison._
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.--_Gibbon._
Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.--_Byron._
Through the wide world he only is alone who lives not for another.--_Rogers._
Solitude is the worst of all companions when we seek comfort and oblivion.--_Mery._
~Sophistry.~--The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.--_Coleridge._
There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.--_Sir W. Raleigh._
~Sorrow.~--Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.--_Shelley._
If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e'er I did commit.--_Shakespeare._
And weep the more, because I weep in vain.--_Gray._
The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.--_Seneca._
Sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self.--_Keats._
The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.--_Sir P. Sidney._
Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.--_Tennyson._
Sorrow being the natural and direct offspring of sin, that which first brought sin into the world must, by necessary consequence, bring in sorrow too.--_South._
In extent sorrow is boundless. It pours from ten million sources, and floods the world. But its depth is small. It drowns few.--_Charles Buxton._
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.--_Chapin._
The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.--_Moore._
Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.--_Shakespeare._
Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.--_Mazzini._
Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.--_Schiller._
He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.--_Jeremy Taylor._
~Soul.~--Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.--_Rousseau._
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.--_Hood._
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.--_George Eliot._
Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.--_Sir W. Raleigh._
~Specialty.~--No one can exist in society without some specialty. Eighty years ago it was only necessary to be well dressed and amiable; to-day a man of this kind would be too much like the garcons at the cafes.--_Taine._
~Speech.~--Sheridan once said of some speech, in his acute, sarcastic way, that "it contained a great deal both of what was new and what was true: but that unfortunately what was new was not true, and what was true was not new."--_Hazlitt._
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.--_Heinrich Heine._
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language and has a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth: so people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.--_Dean Swift._
Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs.--_Plutarch._
Never is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come, long after, back to memory, like the murmurs of a distant hymn.--_Henry Giles._
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless--nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.--_George Eliot._
~Sport.~--Dwell not too long upon sports; for as they refresh a man that is weary, so they weary a man that is refreshed.--_Fuller._
~Spring.~--Stately Spring! whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening.--_Richter._
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace.--_Thomson._
The spring, the summer, the chiding autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries.--_Shakespeare._
Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire, hoar Winter's blooming child, delightful Spring.--_Mrs. Barbauld._
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth, by the winds which tell of the violet's birth.--_Mrs. Hemans._
~Stars.~--These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.--_Emerson._
I am as constant as the northern star; of whose true, fixed, and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.--_Shakespeare._
The stars are so far,--far away!--_L. E. Landon._
Day hath put on his jacket, and around his burning bosom buttoned it with stars.--_Holmes._
The evening star, love's harbinger, appeared.--_Milton._
~Statesman.~--The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.--_Burke._
The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.--_J. Stuart Mill._
~Storms.~--When splitting winds make flexible the knees of knotted oaks.--_Shakespeare._
~Strength.~--Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.--_Shakespeare._
~Study.~--Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.--_Bacon._
Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.--_Bolingbroke._
There is no one study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it.--_Pope._
They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material: a man must build his house for himself.--_George MacDonald._
The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Style.~--The style is the man.--_Buffon._
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.--_Ben Jonson._
Not poetry, but prose run mad.--_Pope._
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober natural expressions.--_South._
In the present day our literary masonry is well done, but our architecture is poor.--_Joubert._