Pearls of Thought. Ballou Maturin Murray
tones. —George Eliot.
Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone —Bartol.
Character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well-governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities in the main which rule the world. —Samuel Smiles.
He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him would seem vicious and miserable. —Jeremy Taylor.
In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character: he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies. —Watts.
Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another. —Richter.
We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being. —Thoreau.
Charity.– Charity is a principle of prevailing love to God and good-will to men, which effectually inclines one endued with it to glorify God, and to do good to others. —Cruden.
The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. —Buckminster.
The charities that soothe, and heat, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers. —Wordsworth.
Prayer carries us half way to God, fasting brings us to the door of his palace, and alms-giving procures us admission. —Koran.
Shall we repine at a little misplaced charity, we who could no way foresee the effect, – when an all-knowing, all-wise Being showers down every day his benefits on the unthankful and undeserving? —Atterbury.
As the purse is emptied the heart is filled. —Victor Hugo.
What we employ in charitable uses during our lives is given away from ourselves: what we bequeath at our death is given from others only, as our nearest relations. —Atterbury.
Goodness answers to the theological virtue of charity, and admits no excess but error; the desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess: neither can angel or man come into danger by it. —Bacon.
Poplicola's doors were opened on the outside, to save the people even the common civility of asking entrance; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where want itself was a powerful mediator. —Dryden.
When thy brother has lost all that he ever had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think to lick him whole again only with thy tongue? —South.
What we frankly give, forever is our own. —Granville.
Faith and hope themselves shall die, while deathless charity remains. —Prior.
The place of charity, like that of God, is everywhere. —Professor Vinet.
People do not care to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draftment upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there. —Mackenzie.
Chastity.– Chastity enables the soul to breathe a pure air in the foulest places; continence makes her strong, no matter in what condition the body may be; her sway over the senses makes her queenly; her light and peace render her beautiful. —Joubert.
Cheerfulness.– Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. —Samuel Smiles.
There is no Christian duty that is not to be seasoned and set off with cheerishness, – which in a thousand outward and intermitting crosses may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears. —Milton.
Such a man, truly wise, creams of nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. —Swift.
Be thou like the bird perched upon some frail thing, although he feels the branch bending beneath him, yet loudly sings, knowing full well that he has wings. —Mme. de Gasparin.
Children.– With children we must mix gentleness with firmness; they must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted. If we never have headaches through rebuking them, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up. Be obeyed at all costs. If you yield up your authority once, you will hardly ever get it again. —Spurgeon.
The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun. —Richter.
The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. —Thackeray.
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. —George Eliot.
Children are excellent physiognomists and soon discover their real friends. Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are. What is childhood but a series of happy delusions? —Sydney Smith.
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the cradle foot. —Richter.
A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks. —Southey.
Children have more need of models than of critics. —Joubert.
The bearing and training of a child is woman's wisdom. —Tennyson.
One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small mythologies of its own. —Holmes.
Do not shorten the beautiful veil of mist covering childhood's futurity, by too hastily drawing away; but permit that joy to be of early commencement and of long duration, which lights up life so beautifully. The longer the morning dew remains hanging in the blossoms of flowers, the more beautiful the day. —Richter.
Where children are there is the golden age. —Novalis.
In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. —George Eliot.
The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them happy, you have wronged them; no other good they may get can make up for that. —Charles Buxton.
Christ.– Our religion sets before us, not the example of a stupid stoic who had by obstinate principles hardened himself against all sense of pain beyond the common measures of humanity, but an example of a man like ourselves, that had a tender sense of the least suffering, and yet patiently endured the greatest. —Tillotson.
However consonant to reason his precepts appeared, nothing could have tempted men to acknowledge him as their God and Saviour but their being firmly persuaded of the miracles he wrought. —Addison.
Imitate Jesus Christ. —Franklin.
The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it is history, and in general, only that history is history which might also be fable. —Novalis.
Christianity.– Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered tones of her blessed voice. —Coleridge.
There was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth. —Bacon.
No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good. —Lord Bolingbroke.
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