SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS.

THOUGHT.

A pointing hand along life's way,
A dear companion through the day;
A friend who willingly takes flight
When sweet oblivion shrouds the night.
A guard, a guide, by all men sought,
For all that is, is born of Thought.

-J. C. H.

A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.

-Bacon.

Think well! Do well will follow thought,
And in the fatal sequence of this world
An evil thought may soil thy children's blood.

-Tennyson.

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. -Byron.

When anger rushes, unrestrained, to action,
Like a hot steed, it stumbles in its way:
The man of thought strikes deepest, and strikes
safest.

-Overbury.

All are architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great.
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its place, is best ;
And what seems but idle show,

Strengthens and supports the rest.
-Longfellow.

Fully to understand a sublime and beautiful thought, requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.

Man beholds the face, but God looks upon the heart. Man considers the actions, but God weighs the intentions.

-Thomas à Kempis.

Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.

-Colton.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears; To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. -Wordsworth.

Thinking leads man to knowledge. He may see and hear, and read and learn, as much as he please; he will never know any of it, except that which he has thought over, that which by thinking he has made the property of his mind. Is it then saying too much if I say, that man by thinking only becomes truly man ? Take away thought from man's life, and what remains ? -Pestalozzi.

For who would lose,

Though full of pain this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide tomb of uncreated night?

-Milton.

Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external Nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the laborers on the surface do not dream.

-Longfellow.

It seems to me that our thoughts are a more true measure of ourselves than our actions are. . . . The contradiction which too often exists between our outward actions and our inward intentions is only to be detected in the realm of our thoughts, whither none but God can penetrate. . . . In like manner an impulse will

sometimes show more of our real character than what we do after deliberation.

-Frederick W. Faber, D.D.

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.
-Cranch.

Fancies, like wild flowers, in a night may grow; But thoughts are plants whose stately growth is slow.

-Mrs. E. C. Kinneu.

Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o'er thee swell and throng:
They will condense within thy soul
And change to purpose strong.

-Newman.

O shame! shame! shame! That you, a noble-
man,

Should be so little noble in your thoughts.
-Longfellow.

The keen spirit

Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought
Start into instant action, and at once
Plans and performs, resolves and executes.
-Hannah More.

I am of opinion that there is nothing of any kind so beautiful, but there is something still more beautiful, of which this is the mere image and expression-as a portrait is from a person's face-a something which can neither be perceived by the eyes, the ears, nor any of the senses; we comprehend it merely in the thoughts of our minds.

-Cicero.

To each his sufferings; all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies;
Thought would destroy their paradise-
No more ;-where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

-Thomas Gray.

Mere thought convinces; feeling always persuades. If imagination furnishes the fact with wings, feeling is the great stout muscle which plies them, and lifts him from the ground. Thought sees beauty, emotion feels it.

-Theodore Parker.

Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart,

-Hood.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

-Emerson.

We are wrong always, when we think too much
Of that we think or are; albeit our thoughts
Be verily bitter as self sacrifice,

We're no less selfish. If we sleep on rocks
Or roses, sleeping past the hour of noon
We're lazy.

-Mrs. Browning.