The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Style.—The style is the man.—Buffon.
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.—Ben Jonson.
Not poetry, but prose run mad.—Pope.
There is a certain majesty in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned periods, but commands in sober natural expressions.—South.
In the present day our literary masonry is well done, but our architecture is poor.—Joubert.
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lense effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.—Colton.
A temperate style is alone classical.—Joubert.
Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning.—Macaulay.
Style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.—Bancroft.
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.—Joubert.
Subordination.—The usual way that men adopt to appease the wrath of those whom they have offended, when they are at their mercy, is humble submission; whereas a bold front, a firm and resolute bearing,—means the very opposite,—have been at times equally successful.—Montaigne.
Reverences stand in awe of yourself.—Sydney Smith.
He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.—Milton.
Success.—It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.—Samuel Smiles.
From mere success nothing can be concluded in favor of any nation upon whom it is bestowed.—Atterbury.
He that would relish success to purpose should keep his passion cool, and his expectation low.—Jeremy Collier.
The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit,—that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.—Charles Buxton.
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.—Longfellow.
Nothing can seem foul to those that win.—Shakespeare.
All the proud virtue of this vaunting world fawns on success and power, however acquired.—Thomson.
A successful career has been full of blunders.—Charles Buxton.
The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who, early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Thus, indeed, even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.—Charles Buxton.
Success at first doth many times undo men at last.—Venning.
Suicide.—Suicide itself, that fearful abuse of the dominion of the soul over the body, is a strong proof of the distinction of their destinies. Can the power that kills be the same that is killed? Must it not necessarily be something superior and surviving? The act of the soul, which in that fatal instant is in one sense so great an act of power, can it at the same time be the act of its own annihilation? The will kills the body, but who kills the will?—AugusteNicolas.
Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves.—Sherlock.
He who, superior to the checks of nature, dares make his life the victim of his reason, does in some sort that reason deify, and takes a flight at heaven.—Young.
Summer.—Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes.—Thomson.
Beneath the Winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers.—Whittier.
Sun.—The glorious sun stays in his course, and plays the alchemist, turning with the splendor of his precious eyes the meagre, cloddy earth to glittering gold.—Shakespeare.
The downward sun looks out effulgent from amid the flash of broken clouds.—Thomson.
Sunday.—If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.—Macaulay.
Oh, what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath-day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.—W. Wilberforce.
Superstition.—A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel.—George Eliot.
Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.—Seneca.
Every inordination of religion that is not in defect is properly called superstition.—Jeremy Taylor.
The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.—Watts.
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable.—Joubert.
It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made; an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding.—George Eliot.
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.—Holmes.
Surety.—He who is surety is never sure. Take advice, and never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose. Remember the words of the wise man. "He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it; and he that hateth suretyship is sure."—Spurgeon.
Surfeit.—They are sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.—Shakespeare.
Satiety comes of riches, and contumaciousness of satiety.—Solon.
Suspicion.—To be suspicious is to invite treachery.—Voltaire.
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.—Thoreau.
Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.—Madame Swetchine.
Don't seem to be on the lookout for crows, else you'll set other people watching.—George Eliot.
Sympathy.—Surely, surely, the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him—which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.—George Eliot.
Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.—Burke.
Outward things don't give, they draw out. You find in them what you bring to them. A cathedral makes only the devotional feel devotional. Scenery refines only the fine-minded.—Charles Buxton.
Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.—Bulwer-Lytton.
I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands; be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.—Sterne.
Tact.—A tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours.—Macaulay.
Talent.—It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd that are destined for the collar and the yoke.—Colton.
Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing!—Sydney Smith.
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.—Colton.
As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us. They rise where they are least expected. They fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.—Burke.
Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry, and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.—Hazlitt.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.—Coleridge.
It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent,—almost like a carrier-pigeon.—George Eliot.
Talking.—I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue, that an echo must wait till she dies, before it can catch her last words!—Congreve.
Talkers are no good doers.—Shakespeare.
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in woman?—Holmes.
Who think too little and who talk too much.—Dryden.
They talk most who have the least to say.—Prior.
Taste.—Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.—Goldsmith.
There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.—Southey.
Those internal powers, active and strong, and feelingly alive to each fine impulse.—Akenside.
All our tastes are but reminiscences.—Lamartine.
Teaching.—Count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.—Luther.
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Tears.—The overflow of a softened heart.—Madame Swetchine.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.—Bible.
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear.—Byron.
Blest tears of soul-felt penitence.—Moore.
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.—Beecher.
The kind oblation of a falling tear.—Dryden.
A penitent's tear is an undeniable ambassador, and never returns from the throne of grace unsatisfied.—Spencer.
Fate and the dooming gods are deaf to tears.—Dryden.
We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears, a power which he has in common with the meanest onion.—Heinrich Heine.
Her tears her only eloquence.—Rogers.
Eye-offending brine.—Shakespeare.
The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal.—Daniel Webster.
All my mother came into mine eyes, and gave me up to tears.—Shakespeare.
The tear that is wiped with a little address may be followed, perhaps, by a smile.—Cowper.
Virtue is the daughter of Religion. Her sole treasure is her tears.—Madame Swetchine.
Nothing dries sooner than a tear.—George Herbert.
My plenteous joys, wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow.—Shakespeare.
Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew.—Dryden.
Tears are sometimes the happiest smiles of love.—Stendhal.
Tediousness.—The sin of excessive length.—Shirley.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.—Shakespeare.
Teeth.—Teeth like falling snow for white.—Cowley.
Such a pearly row of teeth that sovereignty would have pawned her jewels for them.—Sterne.
Temperance.—Temperance puts wood on the fire, meal in the barrel, flour in the tub, money in the purse, credit in the country, contentment in the house, clothes on the back, and vigor in the body.—Franklin.
I consider the temperance cause the foundation of all social and political reform.—Cobden.
If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail.—Horace Mann.
Temperance to be a virtue must be free and not forced. Virtue may be defended, as vice may be withstood, by a statute, but no virtue is or can be created by a law, any more than by a battering ram a temple or obelisk can be reared.—Bartol.
If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.—Sydney Smith.
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.—Voltaire.
He who would keep himself to himself should imitate the dumb animals, and drink water.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Temptation.—No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.—George Eliot.
Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension.—Horace Mann.
Most confidence has still most cause to doubt.—Dryden.
It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of, for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in the field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and camp-fires of prayer.—Chapin.
Love cries victory when the tears of a woman become the sole defense of her virtue.—La Fontaine.
When devils will their blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.—Shakespeare.
The devil tempts us not: it is we tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity.—George Eliot.
Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.—Dryden.
There are times when it would seem as if God fished with a line, and the devil with a net.—Madame Swetchine.
Tenderness.—When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.—George Eliot.
Theatre.—A man who enters the theatre is immediately struck with the view of so great a multitude, participating of one common amusement; and experiences, from their very aspect, a superior sensibility or disposition of being affected with every sentiment which he shares with his fellow-creatures.—Hume.
The theatre has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much it is to be wished that the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds!—Goethe.
Theories.—Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that were of no use; but puzzle their thoughts, and lose themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom.—Sherlock.
Metaphysicians can unsettle things, but they can erect nothing. They can pull down a church, but they cannot build a hovel.—Cecil.
Thought.—I have asked several men what passes in their minds when they are thinking, and I could never find any man who could think for two minutes together. Everybody has seemed to admit that it was a perpetual deviation from a particular path, and a perpetual return to it; which, imperfect as the operation is, is the only method in which we can operate with our minds to carry on any process of thought.—Sydney Smith.
A delicate thought is a flower of the mind.—Rollin.
Earnest men never think in vain though their thoughts may be errors.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.—Samuel Smiles.
Thoughts shut up want air, and spoil like bales unopened to the sun.—Young.
Good thoughts are blessed guests, and should be heartily welcomed, well fed, and much sought after. Like rose leaves, they give out a sweet smell if laid up in the jar of memory.—Spurgeon.
Thought is invisible nature—nature is invisible thought.—Heinrich Heine.
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them, it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.—George Eliot.
Wherever a great mind utters its thoughts,—there is Golgotha.—Heinrich Heine.
"Give me," said Herder to his son, as he lay in the parched weariness of his last illness, "give me a great thought, that I may quicken myself with it."—Richter.
You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.—Sheridan.
Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.—Joubert.
Many men's thoughts are not acorns, but merely pebbles.—Charles Buxton.
A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.—Emerson.
Threats.—Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them.—Colton.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.—Emerson.
Time.—Time's abyss, the common grave of all.—Dryden.
Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.—Shakespeare.
Time makes more converts than reason.—Thomas Paine.
Time stoops to no man's lure.—Swinburne.
Time is the wisest councillor.—Pericles.
Time is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow.—Madame Swetchine.
Time hath often cured the wound which reason failed to heal.—Seneca.
The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good.—Tennyson.
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay no moment but in purchase of its worth; and what its worth! ask death-beds, they can tell.—Young.
The crutch of Time accomplishes more than the club of Hercules.—Balthaser Gracian.
Time is the shower of Danæ; each drop is golden.—Madame Swetchine.
Title.—How impious is the title of "sacred majesty" applied to a worm, who, in the midst of his splendor, is crumbling into dust!—Thomas Paine.
The three highest titles that can be given a man are those of martyr, hero, saint.—Gladstone.
Toleration.—The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.—George Eliot.
Error tolerates, truth condemns.—Fernan Caballero.
Toleration is the best religion.—Victor Hugo.
Tongue.—When we advance a little into life, we find that the tongue of man creates nearly all the mischief of the world.—Paxton Hood.
Travel.—Rather see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully sluggardized at home wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.—Shakespeare.
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins.—N. P. Willis.
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.—Johnson.
To see the world is to judge the judges.—Joubert.
The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles, and why should not other tourists do the same.—Haliburton.
Treason.—Treason pleases, but not the traitor.—Cervantes.
The man was noble; but with his last attempt he wiped it out; betrayed his country; and his name remains to the ensuing age abhorred.—Shakespeare.
Trifles.—A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.—Shakespeare.
We are not only pleased but turned by a feather. The history of a man is a calendar of straws. If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, said Pascal, in his brilliant way, Antony might have kept the world.—Willmott.
A drop of water is as powerful as a thunderbolt.—Huxley.
Riches may enable us to confer favors; but to confer them with propriety and with grace requires a something that riches cannot give: even trifles may be so bestowed as to cease to be trifles. The citizens of Megara offered the freedom of their city to Alexander; such an offer excited a smile in the countenance of him who had conquered the world; but he received this tribute of their respect with complacency on being informed that they had never offered it to any but to Hercules and himself.—Colton.
There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle.—Emerson.
It is in those acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge.—George Eliot.
The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.—Madame Swetchine.
Little things console us, because little things afflict us.—Pascal.
Trouble.—Annoyance is man's leaven; the element of movement, without which we would grow mouldy.—Feuchtersleben.
Truth.—Veracity is a plant of Paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.—George Eliot.
Nothing so beautiful as truth.—Des Cartes.
All high truth is poetry. Take the results of science: they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods of reaching them.—Charles Buxton.
Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.—Thoreau.
Whenever you look at human nature in masses, you find every truth met by a counter truth, and both equally true.—Charles Buxton.
Truth need not always be embodied; enough if it hovers around like a spiritual essence, which gives one peace, and fills the atmosphere with a solemn sweetness like harmonious music of bells.—Goethe.
Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie.—George Herbert.
We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff; on the contrary, we may sometimes profitably receive a bushel of chaff for the few grains of truth it may contain.—Dean Stanley.
The first great work is that yourself may to yourself be true.—Roscommon.
In troubled water you can scarce see your face, or see it very little, till the water be quiet and stand still: so in troubled times you can see little truth; when times are quiet and settled, then truth appears.—Selden.
Men are as cold as ice to the truth, hot as fire to falsehood.—La Fontaine.
The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it. Do you go home and search for it.—Mencius.
Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of will than of habit; and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit.—Ruskin.
Forgetting that the only eternal part for man to act is man, and that the only immutable greatness is truth.—Lamartine.
Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.—Joubert.
Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.—Gray.
The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.—Cowper.
Blunt truths make more mischief than nice falsehoods do.—Pope.
Truth has rough flavors if we bite through.—George Eliot.
Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.—Goethe.
All truths are not to be repeated, still it is well to hear them.—Mme. du Deffaud.
It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always avenges itself.—Auerbach.
Nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.—Charles Sumner.
Verity is nudity.—Alfred de Musset.
Twilight.—Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and all is gray.—Byron.
Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon, like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape.—Longfellow.
Twilight gray hath in her sober livery all things clad.—Milton.
The day is done; and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver!—Longfellow.
The weary sun hath made a golden set, and, by the bright track of his fiery car, gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.—Shakespeare.
Ugliness.—I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was always ugly, and with a woman, that is half the battle.—Heinrich Heine.
Ugliness, after virtue, is the best guardian of a young woman.—Mme. de Genlis.
Understanding.—The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.—Bacon.
In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power of perceiving and conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility; the power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing them into wholes, according to a law of unity: and in its most comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension.—Coleridge.
Unselfishness.—The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.—Froude.
Uprightness.—To redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee. Solely over one man therein thou hast quite absolute control. Him redeem, him make honest.—Thomas Carlyle.
Urbanity.—Poor wine at the table of a rich host is an insult without an apology. Urbanity ushers in water that needs no apology, and gives a zest to the worst vintage.—Zimmermann.
Usefulness.—Nothing in this world is so good as usefulness. It binds your fellow-creatures to you, and you to them; it tends to the improvement of your own character; and it gives you a real importance in society, much beyond what any artificial station can bestow.—Sir B. C. Brodie.
On the day of his death, in his eightieth year, Elliott, "the Apostle of the Indians," was found teaching an Indian child at his bed-side. "Why not rest from your labors now?" asked a friend. "Because," replied the venerable man, "I have prayed God to render me useful in my sphere, and He has heard my prayers; for now that I can no longer preach, He leaves me strength enough to teach this poor child the alphabet."—Rev. J. Chaplin.
There is but one virtue—the eternal sacrifice of self.—George Sand.
Valentine.—Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.—Charles Lamb.
The fourteenth of February is a day sacred to St. Valentine! It was a very odd notion, alluded to by Shakespeare, that on this day birds begin to couple; hence, perhaps, arose the custom of sending on this day letters containing professions of love and affection.—Noah Webster.
Valor.—Valor gives awe, and promises protection to those who want heart or strength to defend themselves. This makes the authority of men among women, and that of a master buck in a numerous herd.—Sir W. Temple.
How strangely high endeavors may be blessed, where piety and valor jointly go.—Dryden.
Those who believe that the praises which arise from valor are superior to those which proceed from any other virtues have not considered.—Dryden.
Vanity.—Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.—Bible.
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiæ of mental make in which one of us differs from another.—George Eliot.
One of the few things I have always most wondered at is, that there should be any such thing as human vanity. If I had any, I had enough to mortify it a few days ago; for I lost my mind for a whole day.—Pope.
Greater mischiefs happen often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.—Burke.
It is vanity which makes the rake at twenty, the worldly man at forty, and the retired man at sixty. We are apt to think that best in general for which we find ourselves best fitted in particular.—Pope.
O frail estate of human things.—Dryden.
The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.—George Eliot.
Vanity is the quicksand of reason.—George Sand.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honors have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess that these honors were more than their due and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told. Whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honors below his merits, and consequently scorns to boast. I, therefore, deliver it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character of a proud man ought to conceal his vanity.—Swift.
Vexations.—Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so also the smallest affairs disturb us most.—Montaigne.
Vice.—As to the general design of providence, the two extremes of vice may serve (like two opposite biases) to keep up the balance of things. When we speak against one capital vice, we ought to speak against its opposite; the middle betwixt both is the point for virtue.—Pope.
This is the essential evil of vice; it debases a man.—Chapin.
It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door be able to say: "No room for your ladyship: pass on."—Bulwer-Lytton.
I ne'er heard yet that any of these bolder vices wanted less impudence to gainsay what they did, than to perform it first.—Shakespeare.
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.—Burke.
One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Vicissitudes.—We do not marvel at the sunrise of a joy, only at its sunset! Then, on the other hand, we are amazed at the commencement of a sorrow-storm; but that it should go off in gentle showers we think quite natural.—Richter.
Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success,—to this man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd; to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident; to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.—Thackeray.
Victory.—Victory or Westminster Abbey.—Nelson.
Victory may be honorable to the arms, but shameful to the counsels, of a nation.—Bolingbroke.
Victory belongs to the most persevering.—Napoleon.
It is more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.—Walter Scott.
Villainy.—Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.—Goldsmith.
Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.—Colton.
Violence.—Nothing good comes of violence.—Luther.
Violence does even justice unjustly.—Carlyle.
Vehemence without feeling is rant.—H. Lewes.
Virtue.—I willingly confess that it likes me better when I find virtue in a fair lodging than when I am bound to seek it in an ill-favored creature.—Sir P. Sidney.
This is the tax a man must pay to his virtues—they hold up a torch to his vices, and render those frailties notorious in him which would have passed without observation in another.—Colton.
True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.—Lamartine.
It would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.—John Stuart Mill.
Most men admire virtue, who follow not her lore.—Milton.
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue: these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.—Confucius.
Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.—Joubert.
No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.—Colton.
Virtue can see to do what virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon were in the flat sea sunk.—Milton.
Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.—Plato.
Virtue is a rough way but proves at night a bed of down.—Wotton.
Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand.—Confucius.
Virtues that shun the day and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calm of life.—Addison.
That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.—Goldsmith.
Why expect that extraordinary virtues should be in one person united, when one virtue makes a man extraordinary? Alexander is eminent for his courage; Ptolemy for his wisdom; Scipio for his continence; Trajan for his love of truth; Constantius for his temperance.—Zimmermann.
Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.—Feltham.
Our virtues live upon our income, our vices consume our capital.—J. Petit Senn.
Wealth is a weak anchor, and glory cannot support a man; this is the law of God, that virtue only is firm, and cannot be shaken by a tempest.—Pythagoras.
All bow to virtue and then walk away.—De Finod.
Virtue is an angel; but she is a blind one, and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness,—ready to forge cannon-balls or to print New Testaments, to navigate a corsair's vessel or a missionary ship.—Horace Mann.
Vulgarity.—The vulgarity of inanimate things requires time to get accustomed to; but living, breathing, bustling, plotting, planning, human vulgarity is a species of moral ipecacuanha, enough to destroy any comfort.—Carlyle.
Dirty work wants little talent and no conscience.—George Eliot.
Waiting.—It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero will then know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely.—Thoreau.
Want.—Nothing makes men sharper than want.—Addison.
Hundreds would never have knownwantif they had not first knownwaste.—Spurgeon.
It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.—Fielding.
If any one say that he has seen a just man in want of bread, I answer that it was in some place where there was no other just man.—St. Clement.
War.—Take my word for it, if you had seen but one day of war, you would pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again.—Wellington.
Wherever there is war, there must be injustice on one side or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life. But in a malignant war there is injustice of ignobler kind at once to God and man, which must be stemmed for both their sakes.—Ruskin.
Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.—Lamartine.
The fate of war is to be exalted in the morning, and low enough at night! There is but one step from triumph to ruin.—Napoleon.
Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit.—Spenser.
Providence for war is the best prevention of it.—Bacon.
The bodies of men, munition, and money, may justly be called the sinews of war.—Sir W. Raleigh.
War is the matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.—Burke.
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.—Gibbon.
The fate of a battle is the result of a moment,—of a thought: the hostile forces advance with various combinations, they attack each other and fight for a certain time; the critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides, and the least reserve accomplishes the object.—Napoleon.
The feast of vultures, and the waste of life.—Byron.
I abhor bloodshed, and every species of terror erected into a system, as remedies equally ferocious, unjust, and inefficacious against evils that can only be cured by the diffusion of liberal ideas.—Mazzini.
Weakness.—Weakness is thy excuse, and I believe it; weakness to resist Philistian gold: what murderer, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness.—Milton.
The strength of man sinks in the hour of trial; but there doth live a Power that to the battle girdeth the weak.—Joanna Baillie.
How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens?—Joubert.
Weakness is born vanquished.—Madame Swetchine.
Wealth.—An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned, if the accession be sudden; he is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder, people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so.—Cecil.
If Wealth come, beware of him, the smooth, false friend! There is treachery in his proffered hand; his tongue is eloquent to tempt; lust of many harms is lurking in his eye; he hath a hollow heart; use him cautiously.—Tupper.
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant, finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.—Colton.
Weeping.—What women would do if they could not cry, nobody knows! What poor, defenseless creatures they would be!—Douglas Jerrold.
Welcome.—Heaven opened wide her ever-during gates, harmonious sound! on golden hinges turning.—Milton.
Wickedness.—The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent.—Racine.
The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.—Rousseau.
Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation.—Plutarch.
What rein can hold licentious wickedness, when down the hill he holds his fierce career?—Shakespeare.
Wife.—Thy wife is a constellation of virtues; she's the moon, and thou art the man in the moon.—Congreve.
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.—Shakespeare.
O woman! thou knowest the hour when the goodman of the house will return, when the heat and burden of the day are past; do not let him at such time, when he is weary with toil and jaded with discouragement, find upon his coming to his habitation that the foot which should hasten to meet him is wandering at a distance, that the soft hand which should wipe the sweat from his brow is knocking at the door of other houses.—Washington Irving.
Her pleasures are in the happiness of her family.—Rousseau.
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.—Shakespeare.
The wife safest and seemliest by her husband stays.—Milton.
Will.—In the schools of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day till he has acquired strength; and we must do the same, and not be like those poor wretches who, after one failure, suffer themselves to be swept along as by a torrent. You need butwill, and it is done; but if you relax your efforts, you will be ruined; for ruin and recovery are both from within.—Epictetus.
Winter.—After summer ever more succeeds the barren winter with his nipping cold.—Shakespeare.
Winter binds our strengthened bodies in a cold embrace constringent.—Thomson.
Wisdom.—Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house some time before it fall; it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him; it is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.—Bacon.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.—Coleridge.
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably, and well, in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.—Montaigne.
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter, it is deceptive.—Whately.
You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was—that he knew nothing.—Congreve.
To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.—Hazlitt.
Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.—Tennyson.
Seize wisdom ere 'tis torment to be wise; that is, seize wisdom ere she seizes thee.—Young.
Wisdom married to immortal verse.—Wordsworth.
No man can be wise on an empty stomach.—George Eliot.
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.—Euripides.
Wishes.—The apparently irreconcilable dissimilarity between our wishes and our means, between our hearts and this world, remains a riddle.—Richter.
Wit.—I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit, and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch, and tumbling into it.—Johnson.
Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.—Shakespeare.
Wit must grow like fingers. If it be taken from others 'tis like plums stuck upon blackthorns; there they are for a while, but they come to nothing.—Selden.
If he who has little wit needs a master to inform his stupidity, he who has much frequently needs ten to keep in check his worldly wisdom, which might otherwise, like a high-mettled charger, toss him to the ground.—Scriver.
To place wit above sense is to place superfluity above utility.—Madame de Maintenon.
Woe.—No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.—Walter Scott.
Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.—Herrick.
So many miseries have crazed my voice, that my woe-wearied tongue is still.—Shakespeare.
Woman.—Who does know the bent of woman's fantasy?—Spenser.
Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.—Heinrich Heine.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.—George Eliot.
To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her sex.—Bulwer-Lytton.
They never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top.—Bishop Whately.
The woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies. But she performs her part best who can take freely, of her own choice, the alien to her heart, can bear and foster it with sincerity and love.—Richter.
God has placed the genius of women in their hearts; because the works of this genius are always works of love.—Lamartine.
Women for the most part do not love us. They do not choose a man because they love him, but because it pleases them to be loved by him. They love love of all things in the world, but there are very few men whom they love personally.—Alphonse Karr.
Woman is the Sunday of man; not his repose only, but his joy; the salt of his life.—Michelet.
Women see through and through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.—Charles Buxton.
It goes far to reconciling me to being a woman when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one.—Lady Montague.
Men are women's playthings; woman is the devil's.—Victor Hugo.
Sing of the nature of woman, and the song shall be surely full of variety,—old crotchets and most sweet closes,—it shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly,—one in all, and all in one!—Beaumont.
Her step is music and her voice is song.—Bailey.
Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.—Michelet.
Woman, sister! there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant, not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you can create yourselves into any of these grand creators, why have you not?—De Quincey.
There are three things a wise man will not trust: the wind, the sunshine of an April day, and woman's plighted faith.—Southey.
Woman is mistress of the art of completely embittering the life of the person on whom she depends.—Goethe.
Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.—Colton.
Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin shine through.—Ruffini.
There are female women, and there are male women.—Charles Buxton.
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!—George Eliot.
Men at most differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.—Tennyson.
Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day.—Arsène Houssaye.
A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.—George Eliot.
There remains in the faces of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later, an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.—Richter.
Women see without looking; their husbands often look without seeing.—Louis Desnoyeas.
She was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood; at that age when, if ever, angels be for God's good purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers. Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful, that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions.—Dickens.
There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.—Lamartine.
There is something still more to be dreaded than a Jesuit, and that is a Jesuitess.—Eugene Sue.
The honor of woman is badly guarded when it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is honest who does not wish to be.—Adrian Dupuy.
Words.—There are words which sever hearts more than sharp swords; there are words, the point of which sting the heart through the course of a whole life.—Fredrika Bremer.
Words are often everywhere as the minute-hands of the soul, more important than even the hour-hands of action.—Richter.
"The last word" is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-shell.—Douglas Jerrold.
Words, like glass, darken whatever they do not help us to see.—Joubert.
If we use common words on a great occasion they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.—George Eliot.
Words are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.—Colton.
World.—The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.—Horace Walpole.
Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine.—Goldsmith.
Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.—Chamfort.
Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.—Shakespeare.
Worship.—Worship as though the Deity were present. If my mind is not engaged in my worship, it is as though I worshiped not.—Confucius.
Writing.—Writing, after all, is a cold and coarse interpreter of thought. How much of the imagination, how much of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it in words! Man made language and God the genius.—Bulwer-Lytton.
We must write as Homer wrote, not what he wrote.—Théophile Vian.
Wrong.—There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil that is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.—George Eliot.
My soul is sick with every day's report of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.—Cowper.
Youth.—The canker galls the infants of the spring, too oft before their buttons be disclosed; and in the morn and liquid dew of youth contagious blastments are most imminent.—Shakespeare.
Reckless youth makes rueful age.—Moore.
In general, a man in his younger years does not easily cast off a certain complacent self-conceit, which principally shows itself in despising what he has himself been a little time before.—Goethe.
Too young for woe, though not for tears.—Washington Irving.
O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness.—Victor Hugo.
O youth! ephemeral song, eternal canticle! The world may end, the heavens fall, yet loving voices would still find an echo in the ruins of the universe.—Jules Janin.
The youthful freshness of a blameless heart.—Washington Irving.
The heart of youth is reached through the senses; the senses of age are reached through the heart.—Rétif de la Bretonne.
Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Zeal.—I like men who are temperate and moderate in everything. An excessive zeal for that which is good, though it may not be offensive to me, at all events raises my wonder, and leaves me in a difficulty how I should call it.—Montaigne.
In the ardor of pursuit men soon forget the goal from which they start.—Schiller.
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.—Charles Buxton.
Tell zeal it lacks devotion.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Nothing to build and all things to destroy.—Dryden.
Nothing can be fairer, or more noble, than the holy fervor of true zeal.—Molière.
People give the name of zeal to their propensity to mischief and violence, though it is not the cause, but their interest, that inflames them.—Montaigne.
The frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Zealot.—When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?—Emerson.
What I object to Scotch philosophers in general is, that they reason upon man as they would upon a divinity; they pursue truth without caring if it be useful truth.—Sydney Smith.
I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.—Coleridge.
They have an idol, to which they consecrate themselves high-priests, and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious.—Hawthorne.
The end crowns all; and that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end all.—Shakespeare.