32 quotes
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)
An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others.
The Statesman (1836)
The hope, and not the fact, of advancement, is the spur to industry.
The Statesman (1836)
He who gives only what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.
When you give, therefore, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.
To flesh your friend’s curiosity, and then endeavour to leave him with a hûc usque, is exposing your faculty of reticence to an unnecessary trial.
The Statesman (1836)
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)
I have not skill
From such a sharp and waspish word as "No"
To pluck the sting.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)
Good nature and kindness towards those with whom they come in personal contact, at the expense of public interests, that is of those whom they never see, is the besetting sin of public men.
The Statesman (1836)
For no syren did ever so charm the ear of the listener, as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the syren.
The Statesman (1836)
The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.
Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.
The Statesman (1836)
His food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind
And peril to his body.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)
There are few things more important in the business of the state, than that the results of inquiry and research should be realised by those who have had the conduct of it.
The Statesman (1836)
Of all the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love…
Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love…
Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight…
Where there are large powers with little ambition (which will happen sometimes, though seldom) nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes; for she has given the machinery without the vis motrix.
The Statesman (1836)
He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. ’Tis an ill cure
For life’s worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow ’s held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)