Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
Something of a person's character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin.
To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes.
The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.
Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.
The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it. [a predisposition to notice the beautiful, in everything.]
In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.
The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.
We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.
There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.
He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.
It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.
Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, - these are love's pretty ingredients for a kiss.
The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.
Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.
The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.
He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives.
There would not be so much harm in the giddy following the fashions, if somehow the wise could always set them.
A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.
Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest.
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime
There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.
A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.
There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.
Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.
Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.
It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
Age, that acquaints us with infirmities in ourselves, should make us tender in our reprehension of weakness elsewhere.
Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.
In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.
It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.
Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause.
The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.
Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.
Woman's power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers; but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.
The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity.
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.