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Arthur Helps Quotes

1813–1875 England

Sir Arthur Helps (10 July 1813 – 7 March 1875) was an English writer and dean of the Privy Council.

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Random Arthur Helps quote

26 quotes

Do not mistake energy for enthusiasm; the softest speakers are often the most enthusiastic of men.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child’s clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.

The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice. The rich are always advising the poor; but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)

Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion.

Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)

Self-indulgence takes many forms; and we should bear in mind that there may be a sullen sensuality as well as a gay one.

Companions of My Solitude (1851)

No man ever praised two persons equally—and pleased them both.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

Even the most careless people have a sort of aversion to signing things which they have never considered.

Essays written in the Intervals of Business (1841)

You must work for yourself; for what you reject may be as important for you to have seen and thought about, as what you adopt.

Essays written in the Intervals of Business (1841)

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

How often we should stop in the pursuit of folly, if it were not for the difficulties that continually beckon us onwards.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

Soothe the present as much as we may; look forward as hopefully as we can to the future, still the dreadful past must overshadow us.

Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)

The envious man desires some good which another possesses; the jealous man would often be content to be without the good so that that other did not possess it.

Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)

Ah, what a blessing this smoking is! perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America.

Tact is the result of refined sympathy.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

There is one statesman of the present day, of whom I always say that he would have escaped making the blunders that he has made if he had only ridden more in omnibuses.

The unfortunate Ladurlad did not desire the sleep that for ever fled his weary eyelids with more earnestness than most people seek the deep slumber of a decided opinion.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

The knowledge of others which experience gives us, is of slight value when compared with that which we obtain from having proved the inconstancy of our own desires.

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)

There is nothing so easily made offensive as good reasoning; and men of clear logical minds, if not gifted at the same time with tact, make more enemies than men with bad hearts and unsound understandings.

Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Arthur Helps (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.