Men of the highest genius have such a perception of beauty that they reflect it upon human nature as a looking-glass the sun, whereby any object they look at or think upon shines immediately in all the beauty that it has. 410 B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom. 411 Holmes: The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 2. Does not beauty confer a benefit upon us, even by the simple fact of being beautiful? 412 Victor Hugo: The Toilers of the Sea. It is allowed on all hands, that beauty, as well as virtue, always lies in a medium; but where this medium is placed is a great question, and can never be sufficiently explained by general reasonings. 413 Hume: Essays. XIX. Of Simplicity and The beautiful attracts the beautiful. 414 Leigh Hunt: The Seer. Color. The beautiful is beauty seen with the eye of the soul. 415 Joubert: Pensées. No. 273. (Attwell, Trans.) All beauty is delightful, but human beauty . . . is the best of all. 416 Dinah Maria Mulock: Plain Speaking. An Island of the Blest. Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and, therefore, of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls. For I affirm that the good is the beautiful. 417 Plato: Lysis. I. 56. (Jowett, Trans.) Contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. 418 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Preface. (Second edition.) If we can perceive beauty in everything of God's doing, we may argue that we have reached the true perception of its universal laws. 419 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. 1, Ch. 3. I know not that if all things had been equally beautiful we could have received the idea of beauty at all, or if we had, certainly it had become a matter of indifference to us, and of little thought, whereas through the beneficent ordaining of degrees in its manifestation, the hearts of men are stirred by its occasional occurrence in its noblest form, and all their energies are awakened in the pursuit of it, and endeavor to arrest it or re-create it for themselves. 420 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. 1, Ch. 11. There are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. 421 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. 1, Ch. 15. Beauty alone confers happiness on all, and under its influence every being forgets that he is limited. 422 Schiller Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Beauty is absolutely but a property of the world of sense; and the artist, who has the beautiful in view, would not attain to it but inasmuch as he entertains this illusion, that his work is the work of nature. 423 Schiller Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty which is the basis, the principle, and the unity of the beautiful. 424 Schiller Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Beauty of the fantastic or grotesque is not the highest beauty. Art, like nature, must be fantastic, not in her frequent, but in her exceptional moods. The rarest ideal dwells in a realm beyond that which fascinates us by its strangeness or terror, and the votaries of the latter have masters above them as high as Raphael is above Doré. 425 Stedman: Poets of America. Ch. 7. The worship of beauty, though beauty be itself transformed and incarnate in shapes diverse without end, must be simple and absolute, hence only must the believer expect profit or reward. 426 Swinburne Essays and Studies. Notes on Some True beauty is sweetness, and sweetness is the spiritualizing of the gross, the corporeal, and the earthly. 427 George P. Upton: Memories. (Trans. from the It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence. . . . Beauty is of itself a power. 428 Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur. Bk. v. Ch. 3. The divine last touch in perfecting the beautiful is animation. 429 Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur. Bk. v. Ch. 13. Beauty's a coward still without the help of art, and may have the fortune of a conquest, but cannot keep it. Beauty and art can no more be asunder than love and honor. Wycherley: Love in a Wood. Act iii. Sc. 2. 430 BEGGARS-BENEVOLENCE. BEGGARS -see Valor. Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? 431 BEHAVIOR. Shakespeare: King Lear. Act iv. Sc. 6. Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his image. edition.) (Bohn Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. 433 BELIEF- -see Creeds. Being alone when one's belief is firm, is not to be alone. No iron chain, nor outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone! 435 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as a Priest. What a man does not believe can never at bottom be of true interest to him. 436 Carlyle: Letter. To John Carlyle, Dec. 24, 1833. A real Protestant is a person who has examined the evidences of religion for himself, and who accepts them because, after examination, he is satisfied of their genuineness and sufficiency. 437 Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen. Henri Perreyne. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. 438 BELLS. Milton: Areopagitica. Bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven. BENEVOLENCE-see Charity, Imposture, Riches. Disinterestedness is the divine notion of perfection; disinterested benevolence is the supreme ideal. 440 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich. 441 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Money spent upon ourselves may be a millstone about the neck; spent on others, it may give us wings like eagles. 442 Roswell D. Hitchcock: Eternal Atonement. XIV. Receiving and Giving. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive. 443 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1776. Vol. iii. To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive. 444 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. III. 48. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. Horace Mann: Lectures on Education. Lect. vi. Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man. As embodied in man's conduct, it is called the path of duty. 446 Mencius: Works. Bk. vii. Pt. ii. Ch. 16. (Legge, Trans.) Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path. 447 Mencius: Works. Bk. iv. Pt. i. Ch. 10, Sec. 2. He who wishes to be benevolent will not be rich. Mencius: Works. Bk. iii. Pt. i. Ch. 3, Sec. 5. There is something. I think, particularly beautiful and instructive in this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature, for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, it takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream. 449 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. 1, Ch. 12. BIBLE, The. The Bible is the invaluable training-book of the world. 450 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct. 451 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The word of God is a grand encourager of the supreme use of the understanding of men, both in things secular and in things spiritual and divine. 452 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. The word of God tends to make large-minded, noble-minded men. 453 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Men's works have an age, like themselves, and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. This only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes. 454 Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici. Pt. i. Sec. 23. It is a plain old book, modest as nature itself, and as simple, too; a book of an unpretending work-day appearance, like the sun that warms or the bread that nourishes us. A book that looks on us as trustfully and benignantly as the old grandmother who, with tremulous lips and glasses on her nose, reads in it every day. And the name of this book is simply the Bible. 455 Heine: Scintillations, Excerpts, Religion, It is, indeed, justly called Holy Writ. He that has lost his God can find him again, and towards him who never knew him, it wafts the spirit and the breath of the Divine word. 456 Heine: Scintillations, Excerpts, Religion, Philosophy, etc. The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews. The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man. 458 Daniel Webster: Speech, Charlestown, Mass., June 17, 1843. The Bunker Hill Monument. BIBLIOGRAPHERS. Knowledge of books in a man of business is a torch in the hands of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and welfare. 459 Addison: The Spectator. No. 165. BIBLIOPHILISM. There is no blessing that can be given to an artisan's family more than a love of books. 460 John Bright: Speech, June 1, 1882. Opening of Birmingham Free Library. I no sooner, saith he, come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness. Pt. ii. Sect. ii. 461 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy. |