30 quotes
We discern beyond the smile and the honeyed word, and are sickened at the self-created hollowness of a human heart.
The Optimist (1850)
The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth.
The Optimist (1850)
Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency.
The Optimist (1850)
I often muse upon the life of the true artist until it redeems to my mind, the more prosaic aspects of human existence.
The Optimist (1850)
Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures on the tablet of memory into strong relief.
The Optimist (1850)
A popular epithet usually goes nearer the truth than we are apt to imagine.
The Optimist (1850)
The art of walking is at once suggestive of the dignity of man. Progressive motion alone implies power, but in almost every other instance it seems a power gained at the expense of self-possession.
The Optimist (1850)
A pilgrimage is an admirable remedy for over-fastidiousness and sickly refinement.
The Optimist (1850)
This miserable habit of our times is vividly illustrated by the manner in which those next most sacred things to mortals, books, are treated.
The Optimist (1850)
Let us recognise the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment.
The Optimist (1850)
There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars.
The Optimist (1850)
Our times might not inaptly be designated as the age of traveling. Its records form no insignificant branch of the literature of the day.
The Optimist (1850)
It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament.
The Optimist (1850)
Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest.
The Optimist (1850)
It has been often remarked that earnest men excel in humor, and we perceive how benign is the law which thus tempers elements of fearful intensity.
The Optimist (1850)
A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created.
The Optimist (1850)
It has been said that self-respect is the gate of heaven, and the most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character.
The Optimist (1850)
Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.
The Optimist (1850)
If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words.
The Optimist (1850)
Tact is an essential principle of conversation; hence, the eastern metaphor which likens a word spoken in season, to "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The time and the society must regulate the subject.
The Optimist (1850)