As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.
We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator.
Love thou rose, yet leave it on its stem.
The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.
I did not fall into love - I rose into love.
Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error. Its wear and tear on the heart are never recompensed.
Let youth cherish sleep, the happiest of earthly boons, while yet it is at its command; for there cometh the day to all when "neither the voice of the lute nor the birds" shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fell on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews.
Every great man exhibits the talent of organization or construction, whether it be in a poem, a philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy. And without method there is no organization nor construction.
Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart.
And, of all the things upon earth, I hold that a faithful friend is the best.
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.
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. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.
Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.
As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.
Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.
If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not, don't. And the advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.
Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.
There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.
Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.
Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?
Business first, then pleasure.
If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness.
Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.
A man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him.
Despair makes victims sometimes victors.
Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.
A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles.
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
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.
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
You know There are moments when silence, prolonged and unbroken, More expressive may be than all words ever spoken.
Nothing can constitute good-breeding that has not good-nature for its foundation.
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.
Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two.
Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective.
There is no such thing as luck. It's a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.
Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
Success never needs an excuse.
The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.
Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.
Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.
In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body in overwork of the brain.
Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it
The strong and virtuous admit no destiny.
Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.
There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.
Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.
It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.
In science, address the few, in literature the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few.
He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.
In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
Master books, but do not let them master you.
A sense of contentment makes us kindly and benevolent to others; we are not chafed and galled by cares which are tyrannical because original. We are fulfilling our proper destiny, and those around us feel the sunshine of our own hearts.
The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint.
A woman is seldom merciful to the man who is timid.
When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.
Ambition has no rest.
Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.
The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.
Patience is the courage of the conqueror, the strength of man against destiny.
If thou be industrious to procure wealth, be generous in the disposal of it. Man never is so happy as when he giveth happiness unto another.
The Almighty proves his existence by creating.
The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.
Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail.
Nothing ages like laziness.
Whenever man commits a crime heaven finds a witness.
Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.
Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.
The Management of money is, in much, the management of self. If heaven allotted to each man seven guardian angels, five of them, at least, would be found night and day hovering over his pockets.
Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.
Strive, while improving your one talent, to enrich your whole capital as a man. It is in this way that you escape from the wretched narrow-mindedness which is the characteristic of every one who cultivates his specialty alone.
Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.
Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame - to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.
As it has been finely expressed, "Principle is a passion for truth." And as an earlier and homelier writer hath it, "The truths we believe in are the pillars of our world.
It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.
Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.
Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife.
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.
The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion.
He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.
A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.
Come, Death, and snatch me from disgrace.
Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.
Centuries roll, customs change, but, ever since the time of the earliest mother, woman yearns to be the soother.
It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuite or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgement, which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing: for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.
Remedy your deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. Every man has in him good and evil. His good is his valiant army, his evil is his corrupt commissariat; reform the commissariat and the army will do its duty.
Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.
Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.
Prudence, patience, labor, valor; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.
A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.
We tell our triumphs to the crowds, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows.
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.
Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.
Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.
Leave glory to great folks. Ah, castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up!
The brave man wants no charms to encourage him to his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings that would deter him from fulfilling it.
Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many hopes and the non-realization of many fears.
Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man.
To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer's chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.
To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: Leave no stone unturned.
Happy indeed the poet of whom, like Orpheus, nothing is known but an immortal name! Happy next, perhaps, the poet of whom, like Homer, nothing is known but the immortal works. The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.
Remedy your deficiencies,and your merits will take care of themselves.
Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.
What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how difficult to define, how much more difficult to impart! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than supply all.
There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Power is so characteristically calm that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.
Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.
Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
