18 quotes
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. It is only spurious pride that is morbid and sensitive, and shrinks from every touch.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
That happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams, and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
His [the author's] renown has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
They who drink beer will think beer.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but they are starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
The great British Library — an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)