PEARLS OF THOUGHT.
BY
MATURIN M. BALLOU,
AUTHOR OF THE "TREASURY OF THOUGHT," "HISTORY OF CUBA,"
"BIOGRAPHY OFHOSEA BALLOU," ETC., ETC.
Infinite riches in a little room.—Marlowe.
BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. The Riverside Press, Cambridge.1881.[Pg ii]
Copyright, 1880,
By MATURIN M. BALLOU.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O.Houghton & Co.[Pg iii]
To
MY WIFE,
THE PATIENT AND CHEERFUL ASSOCIATE OF MY STUDIES,
AFTER MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF
HAPPY COMPANIONSHIP,
This Volume
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY
THE COMPILER.
Writers of an abler sort,
Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,
Give Truth a lustre, and make Wisdom smile.
Cowper.
General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels ofknowledge, comprehending great store in a little room.
Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, privaterecordes, and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes,and the like, we doe save and recover somewhat from the deluge oftime.
I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs,sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted.
PREFACE.
A verse may find him whom a sermon flies.
George Herbert.
The volume herewith presented is the natural result of the compiler'shabit of transferring and classifying significant passages from knownauthors. No special course of reading has been pursued, the thoughtsbeing culled from foreign and native tongues—from the moss-grown tomesof ancient literature and the verdant fields of to-day. The terseperiods of others, appropriately quoted, become in a degree our own; anda just estimation is very nearly allied to originality, or, as theauthor of Vanity Fair tells us, "Next to excellence is theappreciation of it." Without indorsing the idea of a modern authoritythat the multiplicity of facts and writings is becoming so great thatevery available book must soon be composed of extracts only, still it isbelieved that such a volume as "Pearls of Thought" will serve theinterest of general literature, and especially stimulate the mind of thethoughtful reader to further research. The pleasant duty of thecom[Pg viii]piler has been to follow the expressive idea of Colton, and he hasmade the same use of books as a bee does of flowers,—she steals thesweets from them, but does not injure them.
To