Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. 4630 John Locke: The Conduct of the Understanding. Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author. 4631 Longfellow: Drift-Wood. Table Talk. Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us. 4632 Lowell: Democracy and Other Addresses. No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. Noah Porter: Books and Reading. Ch. 1. 4633 Reading nourisheth the wit; and when it is wearied with study, it refresheth it, yet not without study. 4634 Seneca: Works. Epistles. No. 84. (Thomas Lodge, Editor.) He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. 4635 Shakespeare: Love's Labor's Lost. Act iv. Sc. 2. Given the books of a man, it is not difficult, I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born. 4636 Stoddard: William Makepeace Thackeray. (Harper's Magazine, September, 1874.) The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. 4637 Trollope: Speech, Dec. 7, 1868. Opening of Art With reference to this habit of reading, I make bold to tell you that it is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. 4638 Trollope: Speech, Dec. 7. 1868. Opening of Art Exhibition at Bolton Mechanics' Institution. REALITY. Nothing is high because it is in a high place; and ... nothing is low because it is in a low one. 4639 Dickens: Speeches, Literary and Social. IV. REASON -see Action, Beauty, Conscience, Law, Silence. Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is. 4640 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. out it there can be no large religion. With 4641 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your knuckles. 4642 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. 4643 In life it is Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies. 4644 Heine: Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos. Art Notes. Paris. He that could withstand conscience is frighted at infamy, and shame prevails when reason was defeated. 4645 Johnson: The Rambler. No. 155. The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning. John Stuart Mill: System of Logic. Bk. v. Ch. 1. 4646 Every why hath a wherefore. On Fallacies. 4647 Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors. Act ii. Sc. 2. Give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I. 4648 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. i. Act ii. Sc. 4. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search. 4649 Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things. Shakespeare: King Henry V. Act v. Sc. 1. 4650 RECOMPENSE. There never was a person that did anything worth doing, who did not really receive more than he gave. 4651 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. RECREATION. Thou hast 'damnable iteration. 4652 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. i. Act i. Sc. 2. REFLECTION. Second thoughts, they say, are best. 4653 Dryden: The Spanish Friar. Act ii. The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself. 4654 Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects. Certain reflections are emotions. 4655 REGRET. Victor Hugo: Ninety-Three. Pt. iii. Bk. i. Ch. 17. (Benedict, Translator.) He never complained about the past, never uttered a vain regret. He considered those words idle and profitless which men employ in pleading against irremediable evils. 4656 Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen. RELAXATION It is the breathing time of day with me. RELICS. Francois Rude. Shakespeare: Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 2. Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it. 4658 Shakespeare: King Henry VI. Pt. ii. Act iv. Sc. 2. RELIGION -see Bigotry, Courage, Creeds, Devotion, Dogma, Enthusiasm, Labor, Liberty, Millennium, Miracles, Morality, Persecution, Philosophy, Piety, Salvation, Society, Sunday, Superstition. Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in. 4659 Addison: The Spectator. No. 494. Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows. 4660 Amiel: Journal. Introduction. (Mrs. Humphrey Religion that voice of the deepest human experience. There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth. 4662 Bacon Essays. Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature. All the sobriety which religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces. 4663 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. All true religion must stand on true morality. 4664 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life. A man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious. 4666 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Of all joyful, smiling, ever-laughing experiences, there are none like those which spring from true religion. 4667 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death. Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a 4668 The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in his declarations, and in imitation of his perfections. 4671 Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. 4672 Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. 4673 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Divinity. Religion is life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, friendship looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be in harmony. 4674 James Freeman Clarke: Ten Great Religions. A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere philosophy; nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere history. 4675 Coleridge: Table Talk. Dec. 3, 1831. Religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. 4676 Coleridge: Table Talk. May 5, 1830. Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. it. 4677 Colton: Lacon. Religion is civilization, the highest. 4678 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Lothair. Ch. 48. Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incident of 4679 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Lothair. Ch. 17. Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God. 4680 Froude: Short Stories on Great Subjects. There are at bottom but two possible religions — that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe. 4681 Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects. Calvinism. |