Between Emeralds Pearls

Ideas.-After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.-George Eliot.

Our ideas are transformed sensations.-Condillac.

In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.-Heinrich Heine.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.-Holmes.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.-Taine.

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.-X. Doudan.

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.-Joubert.

Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.-Voltaire.

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.-Bulwer-Lytton.

Idleness.-If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.-Sydney Smith.

Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.-Spurgeon.

In idleness there is perpetual despair.-Carlyle.

Doing nothing with a deal of skill.-Cowper.

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.-Colton.

The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.-Dickens.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.-Chesterfield.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.-Jeremy Taylor.

Let but the hours of idleness cease, and the bow of Cupid will become broken and his torch extinguished.-Ovid.

Ignorance.-Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.-Sydney Smith.

There is no calamity like ignorance.-Richter.

'Tis sad work to be at that pass, that the best trial of truth must be the multitude of believers, in a crowd where the number of fools so much exceeds that of the wise. As if anything were so common as ignorance!-Montaigne.

Ignorance, which in behavior mitigates a fault, is, in literature, a capital offense.-Joubert.

There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.-Coleridge.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance.-Alcott.

The true instrument of man's degradation is his ignorance.-Lady Morgan.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.-George Eliot.

The ignorant hath an eagle's wings and an owl's eyes.-George Herbert.

Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction.-Johnson.

Illusion.-In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.-Madame Swetchine.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.-Voltaire.

Imagination.-We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.-George Eliot.

A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.-Spurgeon.

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.-Joubert.

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.-Johnson.

Imitation.-Imitators are a servile race.-Fontaine.

Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves.-Dr. Vinet.

"Name to me an animal, though never so skillful, that I cannot imitate!" So bragged the ape to the fox. But the fox replied, "And do thou name to me an animal so humble as to think of imitating thee."-Lessing.

Immortality.-When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising; I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal.-Cicero.

Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and consequently imperishable.-Aristotle.

The spirit of man, which God inspired, cannot together perish with this corporeal clod.-Milton.

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.-Socrates.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.-Marcus Antoninus.

The seed dies into a new life, and so does man.-George MacDonald.

Impatience.-Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.-Jeremy Taylor.

Impossibility.-One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.-Democritus.

Improvement.-Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing. Advance with it.-Mazzini.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.-Goldsmith.

Improvidence.-How full or how empty our lives, depends, we say, on Providence. Suppose we say, more or less on improvidence.-Bovée.

Income.-Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.-Colton.

Inconsistency.-Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none: their vows and promises are no more than words of course.-L'Estrange.

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.-George Eliot.

Inconstancy.-The catching court disease.-Otway.

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.-Addison.

Indifference.-Nothing for preserving the body like having no heart.-J. Petit Senn.

Indifference is the invincible giant of the world.-Ouida.

Indigestion.-Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food.-Sydney Smith.

Individuality.-There are men of convictions whose very faces will light up an era, and there are believing women in whose eyes you may almost read the whole plan of salvation.-T. Fields.

Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.-Richter.

The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.-Mazzini.

Indolence.-I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.-Chesterfield.

Lives spent in indolence, and therefore sad.-Cowper.

Days of respite are golden days.-South.

So long as he must fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth and slumber.-Charles Buxton.

Nothing ages like laziness.-Bulwer-Lytton.

Indulgence.-One wishes to be happy before becoming wise.-Mme. Necker.

Industry.-Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.-Addison.

Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest we must sow the seed.-Bailey.

Infidelity.-There is but one thing without honor; smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be,-insincerity, unbelief. He who believes no thing, who believes only the shows of things, is not in relation with nature and fact at all.-Carlyle.

I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.-Richter.

If on one side there are fair proofs, and no pretense of proof on the other, and that the difficulties are more pressing on that side which is destitute of proof, I desire to know whether this be not upon the matter as satisfactory to a wise man as a demonstration.-Tillotson.

The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.-Cecil.

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince profligates by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, and health, their infidelity would soon drop off.-Swift.

Infidelity gives nothing in return for what it takes away. What, then, is it worth? Everything valuable has a compensating power. Not a blade of grass that withers, or the ugliest weed that is flung away to rot and die, but reproduces something.-Dr. Chalmers.

Infirmities.-Never mind what a man's virtues are; waste no time in learning them. Fasten at once on his infirmities.-Bulwer-Lytton.

Influence.-He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but let him consecrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures.-Goethe.

If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.-George MacDonald.

The city reveals the moral ends of being, and sets the awful problem of life. The country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with religious suggestion.-Chapin.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are, but they only pay with interest what they have received.-Macaulay.

In families well ordered there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.-Bulwer-Lytton.

Ingratitude.-The great bulk of mankind resemble the swine, which in harvest gather and fatten upon the acorns beneath the oak, but show to the tree which bore them no other thanks than rubbing off its bark, and tearing up the sod around it.-Scriver.

One great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of our Creator is the very extensiveness of his bounty.-Paley.

Injustice.-The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often his mercy.-Madame Swetchine.

Ink.-A drop of ink may make a million think.-Byron.

Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.-Shakespeare.

The colored slave that waits upon thought.-Mrs. Balfour.

Oh, she is fallen into a pit of ink, that the wide sea hath drops too few to wash her clean again!-Shakespeare.

My ways are as broad as the king's high road, and my means lie in an inkstand.-Southey.

Innocence.-He's armed without that's innocent within.-Pope.

There is no courage but in innocence.-Southern.

There is no man so good who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the law, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.-Montaigne.

Innovation.-The ridiculous rage for innovation, which only increases the weight of the chains it cannot break, shall never fire my blood!-Schiller.

Dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm.-Sydney Smith.

Insanity.-Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire; our ordinary life borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.-Taine.

Inspiration.-Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.-George Eliot.

Contagious enthusiasm.-Mrs. Balfour.

Instinct.-The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent.-Newton.

Instinct harmonizes the interior of animals as religion does the interior of men.-Jacobi.

All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.-Aimé Martin.

An instinct is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instruction.-Paley.

Insult.-It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society do you think it is taken as an insult?-Lady Hester Stanhope.

I once met a man who had forgiven an injury. I hope some day to meet the man who has forgiven an insult.-Charles Buxton.

Insurrection.-Insurrection unusually gains little; usually wastes how much! One of its worst kind of wastes, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and exasperating men against each other by violence done; which is always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even justice unjustly.-Carlyle.

Intellect.-The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbor; when the great merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe.-Bulwer-Lytton.

Intelligence.-The higher feelings, when acting in harmonious combination, and directed by enlightened intellect, have a boundless scope for gratification; their least indulgence is delightful, and their highest activity is bliss.-Combe.

Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters.-Colton.

Light has spread, and even bayonets think.-Kossuth.