Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Influence
God in making man intended by him to reduce all His Works back again to Himself.
Matthew Barker—Natural Theology. P. 85.
My heart is feminine, nor can forget—
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fix’d soul.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto I. St. 196.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Carlyle—Essays. Varnhagen von Ense’s Memoirs.
Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation.
Cicero.
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.
Dryden—Alexander’s Feast. L. 169.
Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another.
George Eliot—Janet’s Repentance. Ch. XIX.
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self.
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
George Eliot—O May I Join the Choir Invisible.
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent,
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Emerson—Each and All.
Ah, qui jamais auroit pu dire
Que ce petit nez retroussé
Changerait les lois d’un empire.
Ah, who could have ever foretold that that little retroussé nose would change the laws of an empire.
Charles Simon Favart—Les Trois Sultanes. (1710). Favart used the story of Soleiman, by Marmontel.
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
Galatians. V. 9.
Nor ease nor peace that heart can know,
That like the needle true,
Turns at the touch of joy or woe;
But turning, trembles too.
Mrs. Greville—Prayer for Indifference. Same idea in Bishop Leighton’s Works.
Lay ye down the golden chain
From Heaven, and pull at its inferior links
Both Goddesses and Gods.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. 8. Cowley’s trans. See also in Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. I. 1004; 1. 1050. Cotton Mather. Treatise entitled Schola et Scala Naturæ. Idea found in Lucan. “Aurea Catena Homeri,” sometimes called “The Hermetic or Mercurial chain.” Idea used by John Arndt—True Christianity. Bk. I. Ch. 4. Southey, quoting Wesley in Life of Wesley. Professor Sedgwick—Review of a Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.
Spontaneously to God should turn the soul,
Like the magnetic needle to the pole;
But what were that intrinsic virtue worth,
Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge,
Fresh from St. Andrew’s College,
Should nail the conscious needle to the north?
Hood—Poem addressed to Rae Wilson.
Our life’s a flying shadow, God the pole,
The needle pointing to Him is our soul.
On a slab in Bishop Joceline’s crypt in Glasgow Cathedral.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.
Longfellow—Charles Sumner. St. 9.
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm f’om floor to ceilin’.
Lowell—The Biglow Papers. Second Series. The Courtin’. St. 6.
You’ve got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word.
Geo. MacDonald—The Marquis of Lossie. Ch. XXVII.
No life
Can be pure in its purpose or strong in its strife
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto VI. St. 40.
No star ever rose or set without influence somewhere.
Owen Meredith—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto VI.
Even here Thy strong magnetic charms I fed,
And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.
To lower good, and beauties less divine,
Sometimes my erroneous needle does incline;
But yet (so strong the sympathy)
It turns, and points again to Thee.
Norris of Bemerton—Aspiration. Same idea in his Contemplation and Love, and The Prayer. Simile of the magnetic needle and the soul found in: Robert Cawdray’s—Treasure or Store-house of Similes, printed in London, 1609. Vol. VI and VII. Gregory—Works. Ch. XXXVII; also Ch. XII. (Ed. 1684). Raimond Lull of Majorica—Memorials of Christian Life. (Before 1315). Southey—The Partidas. In his Omniana. Vol. I. P. 210.
Si possem sanior essem.
Sed trahit invitam nova vis; aliudque Cupido,
Mens aliud.
If it were in my power, I would be wiser; but a newly felt power carries me off in spite of myself; love leads me one way, my understanding another.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. VII. 18.
If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.
Pascal—Thoughts. Ch. VIII. 29. (1623).
Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.
Plato—Ion. Par. V. Simile called “Plato’s Rings.”
By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun.
Plato in Kircher’s Magnes Sive de Arte Magnetica. See also Hare’s Guesses at Truth. 2nd Series. Ed. 3. P. 377.
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. IV. L. 390.
And the touch’d needle trembles to the pole.
Pope—Temple of Fame. L. 431.
They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.
Psalms. LVIII. 4. 5.
Even as the needle that directs the hour,
(Touched with the loadstone) by the secret power
Of hidden Nature, points upon the pole;
Even so the wavering powers of my soul,
Touch’d by the virtue of Thy spirit, flee
From what is earth, and point alone to Thee.
Quarles—Job Mil. Med. IV. Also in Emblems. Bk. I. Emblem 13.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Sir Henry Taylor—Philip Van Artevelde. Pt. I. Act I. Sc. 7.
For so the whole round Earth is every way
Bound by Gold Chains about the Feet of God.
Tennyson—Morte D’Arthur.
I am a part of all that I have met.
Tennyson—Ulysses. L. 18.
I thank God that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down.
Daniel Webster—Second Speech on Foot’s Resolution, Jan. 26, 1830.
It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon’s presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very loose way of talking; but the idea is a very different one from that of his presence at a battle being equal to a reinforcement of forty thousand men.
Duke of Wellington—Memorandum. Sept. 18, 1836.
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives.
Wordsworth—Character of the Happy Warrior.
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace.
Wordsworth—Character of the Happy Warrior.