In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.
Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by passion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.
In the art of design, color is to form what verse is to prose,--a more harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought.
Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals.
As the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so, through social conventionalism, the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.
The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in which it is embraced in sleep. I suppose it never happened to any one to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the sleeping state.
To some characters, fame is like an intoxicating cup placed to the lips,--they do well to turn away from it who fear it will turn their heads. But to others fame is "love disguised," the love that answers to love in its widest, most exalted sense.
If we can still love those who have made us suffer, we love them all the more.
We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.
Out of the attempt to harmonize our actual life with our aspirations, our experience with our faith, we make poetry, - or, it may be, religion.
Fame is that which is known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds.
How often we have had cause to regret that the histrionic art, of all the fine arts the most intense in its immediate effect, should be, of all others, the most transient in its result! - and the only memorials it can leave behind, at best, so imperfect and so unsatisfactory!
I do not like new things of any kind, not even a new gown, far less a new acquaintance, therefore make as few as possible; one can but have one's heart and hands full, and mine are. I have love and work enough to last me the rest of my life.
... the primitve Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradiction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of sympathy, and thus had the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow creatures.
A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.
whatever is morally wrong, is equally wrong in man and in woman and no virtue is to be cultivated in one sex, that is not equally required by the other.
When we talk of leaving our childhood behind us, we might as well say that the river flowing onward to the sea had left the fountain behind.
Modesty and chastity are twins
Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties.
Work in some form or other is the appointed lot of all.
I have great admiration for power, a great terror of weakness, especially in my own sex, yet feel that my love is for those who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation through excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength.
A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious.
A good taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a just taste discriminates the degree--the poco piu and the poco meno. A good taste rejects faults; a just taste selects excellences. A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. A good taste may be lowered or spoilt; a just taste can only go on refining more and more.
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