Irza Fidah's Key Ideas from Pearls of Thought
by Maturin M. Ballou

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Proverbs are potted wisdom.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

For converse among men, beautiful persons have less need of the mind's commending qualities. Beauty in itself is such a silent orator, that it is ever pleading for respect and liking, and, by the eyes of others is ever sending to their hearts for love. Yet even this hath this inconvenience in it—that it makes its possessor neglect the furnishing of the mind with nobleness. Nay, it oftentimes is a cause that the mind is ill.

Luminous escapes of thought.

Submission is the only reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes.

Heaven gives its favorites early death.

Too early fitted for a better state.

Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible; a man might as well have a smoky house and a scolding wife, which are said to be the two worst evils of our life.

The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

How strangely easy difficult things are!

If you believe in evil, you have done evil.

Too much noise deafens us; too much light blinds us; too great a distance or too much of proximity equally prevents us from being able to see; too long and too short a discourse obscures our knowledge of a subject; too much of truth stuns us.

To a father who loves his children victory has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other, and a flower again dwindles down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfolds as a morning-glory in the other.

Old ideas are prejudices, and new ones caprices.

He who knows much has much to care for.

He who cherishes his old knowledge, so as continually to acquire new, he may be a teacher of others.

Conversation never sits easier than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter; which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.

The laughers are a majority.

Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the pieces are swept back into the box—black box with the gilded nails!

Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth.

Childhood is only a wearisome prologue: the first act of the human comedy opens only at the moment when love makes a breach in our hearts.

Love reasons without reason.

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.

He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man's usual fate—he was lost upon the coral reefs.

That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth; the tree of knowledge is not that of life.

Laughter means sympathy.

Love makes all things possible.

A boy was once asked what meekness was. He thought for a moment and said, "Meekness gives smooth answers to rough questions."

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency of the water.

Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.

Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.

Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.

I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.

The best religion is the most tolerant.

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.

You cannot win without sacrifice.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

Whatever may be said about luck, it is skill that leads to fortune.

A successful career has been full of blunders.

Talkers are no good doers.

They talk most who have the least to say.

Time makes more converts than reason.

Time is the wisest councillor.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.