C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Blessings
Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.
Fall silently like dew on roses.
The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.
I dimly guess, from blessings known, of greater out of sight.
Blessings star forth forever; but a curse is like a cloud, it passes.
The benediction of these covering heavens fall on their heads like dew.
Words are as they are taken, and things are as they are used. There are even cursed blessings.
A man’s best things are nearest him, lie close about his feet.
Our blessings are the least heeded, because the most common events of life.
We mistake the gratuitous blessings of heaven for the fruits of our own industry.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
Blessings on him who invented sleep.
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Men live best upon a little; Nature has given to all the privilege of being happy, if they but knew how to use their gifts.
Of many imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
Even the best things ill used become evils; and, contrarily, the worst things used well prove good.
The blessings of fortune are the lowest; the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health; but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind.
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy’s holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.
It is too generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful what they owe to God for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often enough and regularly enough.
Blessings we enjoy daily; and for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises; but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made the sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers and showers and meat and content.
Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings—a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness, a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first would make us grateful; the second, humble; and the third, moderate.
Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He bad pleased.