46 quotes
A poet's mind should be clear and unsullied; and the muses being virgins, their performances should agree with their condition.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Goodness is generous and diffusive; it is largeness of mind, and sweetness of temper, — balsam in the blood, and justice sublimated to a richer spirit.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according to the predominancy of the element.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Power, unless managed with gentleness and discretion, does but make a man the more hated. No intervals of good-humor, no starts of bounty, will atone for tyranny and oppression.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
The size of a man's sense and improvement is discovered by his pleasures as much as by anything else.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Without discretion, people may be overlaid with unreasonable affection, and choked with too much nourishment.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Remorse of conscience is like an old wound; a man is in no condition to fight under such circumstances. The pain abates his vigor and takes up too much of his attention.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Envy is of all others the most ungratifying and disconsolate passion. There is power for ambition, pleasure for luxury, and pelf even for covetousness; but envy gets no reward but yexation.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride, of strong sense and feeble reasons, of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.
Treasury of Thought (1881)
Thoughts take up no room. When they are right, they afford a portable pleasure, which one may travel with, without any trouble or encumbrance.
Treasury of Thought (1881)