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.
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