Part 81

I take memorandums of the schools.--Swift.

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.--Mazzini.

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.--Trublet.

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.--Coleridge.

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.--Bulwer-Lytton.

Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.--J. Petit Senn.

As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.--De Quincey.

~Rain.~--Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.--Roscommon.

The kind refresher of the summer heats.--Thomson.

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.--Waller.

The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.--Dryden.

~Rainbow.~--That smiling daughter of the storm.--Colton.

Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.--J. C. Prince.

God's glowing covenant.--Hosea Ballou.

~Rank.~--If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.--Madame Swetchine.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.--Wycherley.

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.--Southerne.

~Rashness.~--Rashness and haste make all things insecure.--Denham.

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.--Shakespeare.

~Reading.~--Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.--Congreve.

Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.--Milton.

The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.--Montesquieu.

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars.--Macaulay.

Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.--Shakespeare.

The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet.--Coleridge.

~Reason.~--Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.--George Herbert.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.--Voltaire.

If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.--Shakespeare.