Part 92

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.