Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 6

Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and in that man I will show you one who will never be admitted into heaven.--FELTHAM.

BIOGRAPHY.--The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A n.o.ble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.--SAMUEL SMILES.

Biography, especially the biography of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and enn.o.bling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.--HORACE MANN.

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.

BOASTING.--Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.--LAVATER.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.--YOUNG.

A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.--SHAKESPEARE.

Men of real merit, and whose n.o.ble and glorious deeds we are ready to acknowledge, are yet not to be endured when they vaunt their own actions.--aeSCHINES.

The less people speak of their greatness the more we think of it.--BACON.

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament: They are but beggars that can count their worth.

--SHAKESPEARE.

BOOKS.--When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, books only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friends.h.i.+p which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.--WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.

No book can be so good as to be profitable when negligently read.

--SENECA.

He who loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age, will hardly love them enough afterward to understand them.--CLARENDON.

I like books. I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get in their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses.--O.W. HOLMES.

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings--as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.--LONGFELLOW.

Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart.--CHANNING.

We should have a glorious conflagration if all who cannot put _fire_ into their works would only consent to put their works into the _fire_.--COLTON.

Books, dear books, Have been, and are my comforts; morn and night, Adversity, prosperity, at home, Abroad, health, sickness--good or ill report, The same firm friends; the same refreshment rich, And source of consolation.

--DR. DODD.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with n.o.ble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman.--LA BRUYeRE.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves.

They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our pa.s.sions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.--JEREMY COLLIER.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men will know how things are.--COLTON.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part; the rest are confounded with the mult.i.tude.--VOLTAIRE.

Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refres.h.i.+ng rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.--HORACE MANN.

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most.

The hardest way of learning is by easy reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker--it is a s.h.i.+p of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty.--THEODORE PARKER.

Books, like friends, should be few, and well chosen.

Thou mayst as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigor to the mind.--FULLER.

BREVITY.--Brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes.--SHAKESPEARE.

Brevity in writing is what charity is to all other virtues--righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authors.h.i.+p without the other.--SYDNEY SMITH.

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.--SOUTHEY.

The more an idea is developed the more concise becomes its expression; the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.--ALFRED BOUGEANT.

The more you say the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.--FeNELON.

With vivid words your just conceptions grace, Much truth compressing in a narrow s.p.a.ce; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain.

--PINDAR.

Brevity is the child of silence, and is a credit to its parentage.

--H.W. SHAW.

A verse may find him whom a sermon flies.--GEORGE HERBERT.

When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compa.s.s.--STEELE.

BUSINESS.--That which is everybody's business is n.o.body's business.

--IZAAK WALTON.

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.--BOVEE.

Call on a business man at business times only, and on business, transact your business and go about your business, in order to give him time to finish his business.--DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.--SWIFT.

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.--HELPS.

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician--I should like to be also something of a man.--THEODORE PARKER.

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.

The great secret both of health and successful industry is the absolute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business and diversion of the hour--never permitting the one to infringe in the least degree upon the other.--SISMONDI.