In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body in overwork of the brain.
In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail.
Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.
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.
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.
There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
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.
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.
You know There are moments when silence, prolonged and unbroken, More expressive may be than all words ever spoken.
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
Centuries roll, customs change, but, ever since the time of the earliest mother, woman yearns to be the soother.
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.
Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.
Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
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.
A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles.
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.
Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.
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.
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