Pearls of Thought

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me. —Emerson.

Dignity.– It is at once the thinnest and most effective of all the coverings under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. Most of the men of dignity, who awe or bore their more genial brethren, are simply men who possess the art of passing off their insensibility for wisdom, their dullness for depth, and of concealing imbecility of intellect under haughtiness of manner. —Whipple.

Dirt.– "Ignorance," says Ajax, "is a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. —George Eliot.

Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold. —Lamb.

Disappointment.– Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of existence are strewn with them. —Mme. de Staël.

O world! how many hopes thou dost engulf! —Alfred de Musset.

Thirsting for the golden fountain of the fable, from how many streams have we turned away, weary and in disgust! —Bulwer-Lytton.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others. —George Eliot.

Ah! what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me. —Richter.

Discourtesy.– Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several, – from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. —La Bruyère.

Discovery.– Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls as a golden link in the great chain of order. —Chapin.

Discretion.– Be discreet in all things, and go render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any. —Wellington.

Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his particular station of life. —Addison.

Dishonesty.– So grasping is dishonesty that it is no respecter of persons: it will cheat friends as well as foes; and, were it possible, even God himself! —Bancroft.

Dispatch.– Use dispatch. Remember that the world only took six days to create. Ask me for whatever you please except time: that is the only thing which is beyond my power. —Napoleon.

True dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business, as money is of wares, and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch. —Bacon.

Disposition.– A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is even for its own sake incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest. —Fielding.

A good disposition is more valuable than gold; for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature. —Addison.

Distrust.– As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust. —Wendell Phillips.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? —George Eliot.

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly. —Johnson.

Doubt.– Remember Talleyrand's advice, "If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not – don't!" The advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Doubt is hell in the human soul. —Gasparin.

Doubt springs from the mind; faith is the daughter of the soul. —J. Petit Senn.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. —Shakespeare.

The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. —X. Doudan.

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. —Tennyson.

Every body drags its shadow, and every mind its doubt. —Victor Hugo.

Dreams.– Children of night, of indigestion bred. —Churchill.

A world of the dead in the hues of life. —Mrs. Hemans.

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. —Milton.

Dreams always go by contraries, my dear. —Samuel Lover.

We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. —Sir T. Browne.

The mockery of unquiet slumbers. —Shakespeare.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams. —Tennyson.

Dress.– It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists. —Rousseau.

Duty.– Stern daughter of the voice of God. —Wordsworth.

Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life. —Gladstone.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. —Bible.

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. —George Eliot.

Do the duty which lies nearest to thee. —Goethe.

Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would. —George MacDonald.

To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads! —Byron.

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points: his duty to God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by. —Thomas Paine.