Conscience Qutoes

Conscience! Conscience! Man’s most faithful friend!.

Crabbe.

Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.

Byron.

Conscience is the reason, employed about questions of right and wrong, and accompanied with the statements of approbation or condemnation.

Whewell.

A tender conscience is an inestimable blessing; that is, a conscience not only quick to discern what is evil, but instantly to shun it, as the eyelid closes itself against the mote.

N. Adams.

The truth is not so much that man has conscience, as that conscience has man.

Dorner.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience that to compass any object however great.

Channing.

He will easily e content and at peace, whose conscience is pure.

Thomas a kempis.

Conscience is God’s vicegerent on earth, and within the limited jurisdiction given to it, partakes of his infinite wisdom and speaks in his tone of absolute command. It is a revelation of the being of a God, a divine voice in the human soul, making known the presence of its rightful sovereign, the author of the law of holiness and truth.

Bowen.

I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

Shakespeare.

If conscience smite thee once, it is an admonition; if twice, it is a condemnation.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!.

Hawthorne.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Franklin.

Conscience is merely our own judgment of the right or wrong of our actions, and so can never be a safe guide unless enlightened by the word of God.

Tryon Edwards.

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than in having a clear conscience.

Socrates.

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

Mad. De Steal.

Conscience is the voice of the soul, as the passions are the voice of the body. No wonder they often contradict each other.

Rousseau.

A conscience void of offence, before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity.

Daniel Webster.

A good conscience is the palace of Christ; the temple pf the Holy Ghost; the paradise of delight; the standing Sabbath of the saints.

Augustine.

To endeavor to domineer over conscience, is to invade the citadel of heaven.

Charles V.

Conscience is the true vicar of Christ in the soul; a prophet in its information; a monarch in its peremptoriness; a priest in its blessings or anathemas, according as we obey or disobey it.

J. Newman.

Conscience, in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.

Taylor.

Conscience is a sickness.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)

Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.

Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion of others.

A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.

The Non Conformist conscience makes cowards of us all.

Conscience is thoroughly well bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English author.

Confidence Quotes

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Emerson.

I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim “Do not get others to do what you can do yourself.” My motto on the other hand is, “do not do that which others can do as well.”

Booker T.Washington.

Trust not him that hath once broken faith.

Shakespeare.

He that does not respect confidence will never find happiness in his path. The belief in virtue vanishes from his heart; the source of nobler actions becomes extinct in him.

Auffenberg.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom.

Johnson.

Trust him with little, who, without proofs, trusts you with everything, or when he has proved you, with nothing.

Lavater.

When young, we trust ourselves too much; and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth; timid caution of age. Manbood is the isthmus between the two extremes the ripe and fertile season of action when, only, we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.

Colton.

Society is built upon trust, and trust upon confidence in one another’s integrity.

South.

All confidence is dangerous, if it is not entire; we ought on most occasions to speak all, or conceal all. We have already too much disclosed our secrets to a man, from who we think any one single circumstance is to be concealed.

Bruyere.

Let us have a care not to disclose our hearts to those who shut up theirs against us.

Beaumont.

Fields are won by those who believe in winning.

T.W. Higginson.

They can conquer who believe they can.

Dryden.

Confidence imparts a wondrous inspiration to its possessor. It bears him on in security, either to meet no danger, or to find matter of glorious trial.

Milton.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart the opens in return.

Maria Edgeworth.

Confidence in one’s self, though the chief nurse of magnanimity, doth not leave the care of necessary furniture for it; of all the Grecians, Homer doth make Achilles the best armed.

Sir P.Sidney.

I could never pour out my inmost soul without reserve to any human being, without danger of one day repenting my confidence.

Burns.

There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions, than they could be by the perfidy of others.

Burke.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism.

Emerson.

Confidence, in conversation, has a greater share than wit.

Rochefoucauld.

Confidence, in another man’s virtue, is no slight evidence of one’s own.

Montaigne.

If we are truly prudent we shall cherish those noblest and happiest of our tendencies to love and to confide.

Bulwer.

Trust him little who praises all; him less who censures all; and him least who is indifferent to all.

Lavater.

To confide, even though to be betrayed, is much better than to learn only to conceal. In the one case your neighbor wrongs you; but in the other you are perpetually doing injustice to yourself.

Simms.

Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so the impure all things are impure.

Hare.

All confidence which is not absolute and entire, is dangerous. There are few occasions but where a man ought either to say all, or conceal all; for, how little so ever you have revealed of your secret to a friend, you have already said too much if you think it not safe to make him privy to all particulars.

Beaumont.

Conceit Quotes

Conceit is the most contemptible, and one of the most odious qualities in the world. It is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

Hazlitt.

It is wonderful how near conceit is to insanity!

Jerrold.

Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.

Socrates.

He who gives himself airs of importance, exhibits the credentials of impotence.

Lavater.

The overweening self-respect of conceited men relieves others from the duty of respecting them at all.

H.W. Beecher.

Conceit is to nature, what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.

Pope.

The more one speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.

Lavater.

They say that every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not.

Thackeray.

Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats. The first always imposes on itself; the second frequently deveives others.

Zimmerman.

A man poet, prophet, or whatever he may be readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.

Hawthorne.

None are so seldom found alone, or are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves.

Colton.

No man was ever so much deceived by another, as by himself.

Greville.

Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes.

Home.

It is the admirer of himself, and not the admirer of virtue, that thinks him self superior to others.

Plutarch.

The weakest spot in every man is where he thinks himself to be the wisest.

Emmons.

The best of lessons, for a good many people, would be, to listen at a key hole. It is a pity for such that the practice is dishonorable.

Mad. Swetchine.

If he could only see how small a vacancy his death would leave, the proud man would think less of the place he occupies in his life time.

Logouve.

One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of  property, which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated.

George Eliot.

If its colors were but fast colors, self conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a  great man’s idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is forty.

C. Buxton.

I have never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

George Eliot.

Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up.

Ruskin.

We uniformly think too well of our selves. But self conceit is specially the mark of a small and narrow mind. Great and noble natures are most free from it.

Common sense Quotes

Common sense it, of all kinds, the most uncommon. It implies good judgment, sound discretion, and true and practical wisdom applied to common life.

Tryon Edwards.

First sense, and exalted sense, are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit to one man of sense. He that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for reedier change.

Pope.

To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy is to do one’s duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one’s lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is; and despise affection.

Walpole.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they pught to be done.

C.E. Stowe.

“Knowledge, without common sense” says Lee, is “ folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness. It is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.” But with common sense, it is wisdom; with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Farrar.

If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

H.W. Beecher.

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

C. Kingsley.

The crown of all faculties is common sense. It is not enough to do the right thing, it must be done at the right time and place. Talent knows what to do; tack knows when and how to do it.

W. Matthews.

The figure which a man makes in life, the reception which he meets with in company, the esteem paid him by his acquaintance all these depend as much upon his good sense and judgment, as upon any other part of his character. A lam of the best intentions, and farthest removed from all injustice and violence, would never be able to make himself much regarded, without a moderate share of parts and understanding.

Hume.

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it.

The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

Bulwer.

No man is quite sane. Each has a vein of folly in his composition a sight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard top some one paint which he has taken to heart.

Emerson.

If common sense has not the brilliancy of the sun, it has the fixity of the stars.

Caballero.

One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it.

Persian Proverb.

If you haven’t grace, the Lord can give it to you. If you haven’t learning, I’ll help you to get it. But if you haven’t common sense, neither I, not the Lord can give it to you.

John Brown.

Civilization Quotes

The origin of civilization is man’s determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him.

H.C. Bailey (1878-0961) British crimewriter.

Civilization by which I here mean barbarism made strong and luxurious by mechanical power.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) British author.

Civilization a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit vultures.

Malcolm Muggeridge (b.1903) British journalist.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Civilization is the lamb’s skin in which barbarism masquerades.

Our civilization is not even skin deep; it reaches no lower than our clothes. Humanity is still essentially yahoo manity.

Every new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.

Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881) Scottish author.

Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete!

All that is best in the civilization of today, is the fruit of Christ’s appearance among men.

Daniel Webster.

More than one of the strong nations may shortly have to choose between a selfish secular civilization, whose God in science, and an unselfish civilization whose God is Christ.

R.D. Hitchcock.

If  you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.

Victor Hugo.

Here is the element or power of conduct, of intellect and knowledge, of beauty, and of social life and manners, and all needful to build up a complete human life. We have instincts responding to them all, and requiring them all, and we are perfectly civilized only when all these instincts of our nature all these elements in our civilization have been adequately recognized and satisfied.

Matthew Arnold.

In order to civilize a people, it is necessary first to fix it, and this cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil.

De Tocqueville.

The most civilized people are as neat to barbarism, as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

Rivarol.

The trust test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, not the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.

Emerson.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.

Hare.

The ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest sate of civilization, are as productive of selfishness as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of the lowest.

Colton.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form  were dangerous are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

H.W. Beecher.

Civilization is the upward struggle of mankind, in which millions are trampled to death that thousands may mount on their bodies.

Balfour.

Nations like individuals, live or die, but civilization cannot perish.

Mazzini.

The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes. First, men were in chains, that went back to an iron hand then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron, and ruling by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.

Wendell Phillips.

Cities Quotes

The city is an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone and is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a moral and spiritual sense.

E.P. Chapin.

Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.

Emerson.

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of their higher faculties. Cities have always been the fire places of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark, cold world.

Theodore Parker.

God the first garden made, and Cain the first city.

Cowley.

I have found by experience, that they who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.

Goldsmith.

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous purpose, and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.

Bruyere.

The city has always been the decisive battle ground of civilization and religion. It intensifies all the natural tendencies of man. From its formented energies, as well as from its greater weight of numbers, the city controls. Ancient civilizations rose and fell with their leading cities. In modern times, it is hardly too much to say, “as goes the city so goes the world.”

S.J. MC Pherson.

I bless God for cites. They have been as lamps of life along the path ways of humanity and religion. Within them, science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls, freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or oppression. Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the active sentries of almost all Church and state reformation.

Guthrie.

If you would know and not be known, live in a city.

Colton.

Men, by associating in large masses, as in camps and cities, improve their talents, but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds, but weaken their morals.

Colton.

The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned. But there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, whole sale violation of natural law. There are ten men that can succeed on the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.

H.W. Beecher.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

Daniel Webster.

There is no solitude more dreadful for a stranger, an isolated man, than a great city. So many thousands of men, and not one friend.

Boiste.

In the country, a man’s mind is free and easy, and at his own disposal; but in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintance, one’s own and other people’s business, foolish quarrels, ceremonies, visits, impertinent discourses, and a thousand other fopperies and diversions steal away the greatest part of our time, and leave no leisure for better and more necessary employment. Great towns are but a larger sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds, or pounds to beasts.

Charron.

Cheerfulness Quotes

I had rather have a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad.

Shakespeare.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure; but. Scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty, and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.

Addison.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

Carlyle.

The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness; such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene.

Montaigne.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and it s power of endurance the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve in it longer, than the sad or sullen.

Carlyle.

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and the laughter abundant.

Washington Irving.

Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of a man is strong health, as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life.

Ruskin.

Be cheerful always. There is no path but will be easier traveled, no load but will be lighter, no shadow on heart and brain but will lift sooner for a person of determined cheerfulness.

Get into the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud, and when you have found it, continue to look at it, rather than at the leaden gray in the middle. It will help you over many hard places.

Willlitts.

To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meals, and of sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

Bacon.

A light heart living long.

Shakespeare.

Cheerfulness is health; its opposite, melancholy, is disease.

Haliburton.

If my heart were not light, I would die,

Joanna Baillie.

If the soul be happily disposed every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.

Goldsmith.

The true source of cheerfulness is benevolence. The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.

P. Godwin.

Climate has much to do with cheerfulness, but nourishing food, a good, digestion, and good health much more.

A. Rhodes.

If good people would but make their goodness agreeable, and smile instead of frowning in their virtue, how many would they win to the good cause.

Usher.

An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.

Fuller.

God is glorified, not by our groans but by our thanksgivings; and all good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer.

E.P. Whipple.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The former is an act, the latter habit of the mind;. Mirth is short and transient; cheerfulness, fixed and permanent. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a king of day light in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Addison.

Character Quotes

Every man has three characters; that which he shows, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) French journalist, novelist.

Men will often say that they have “found themselves” when they have really been worn down into a groove by the brutal and compulsive force of circumstance.

Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) American author.

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he know he would never be found out.

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) English historian.

Character the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self respect springs.

Joan Didion (b.1934) American writer.

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much.

Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone we know.

People always say that they are not themselves when tempted by anger into betraying what they really are.

You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans.

Ronald Reagan (b.1911) American president.

Character is perfectly educated will.

Novalis.

The noblest contribution which any man can make for the benefit of posterity, is that of a good character. The richest bequest which any man can leave to the youth of his native land, is that of a shining, spotless example.

R.C. Winthrop.

Let us not say, Every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, Every man is the architect of his own character.

G.D. Boardman.

Give us a character on which we can thoroughly depend, which we know to be based on principle and on the fear of God, and it is wonderful how many brilliant and popular and splendid qualities we can safely and gladly dispense with.

A.P. Stanley.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe.

There is not a man or woman, how ever poor they may be, but have it in their power, by the grace of God, to leave behind them the grandest thing on earth, character; and their children might rise up after them and thank God that their mother was a pious woman, or their father a pious man.

N.Macleod.

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us.

Humboldt.

It is not what a man gets, but what a man is, that he should think of. He should think first of his character, and then of his condition; for if he have the former, he need have no fears about the latter. Character will draw condition after it.

Circumstances obey principles.

H.W. Beecher.

Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in insignificant mattes, and in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others, and denies nothing to itself.

Schopenhauer.

He who acts wickedly in private life, can never be expected to show himself noble in public conduct. He that is base at home, will not acquit himself with honor abroad; for it is not the man, but only the place that is changed.

Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone.

Bartol.

Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.

Whitman.

Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters; some are mere letters, some contain entire words, lines, pages, which at once decipher the life if a man. One such genuine uninterrupted page may be your key to all the rest; but first be certain that he wrote it all alone, and without thinking of publisher or reader.

Lavater.

A man’s character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people that is the substance, this is the shadow.

H.W. Beecher.

Chance Quotes

There is no such things as chance; and what seems to us the merest accident springs fro m the deepest source of destiny.

Schiller.

By the world chance we merely express our ignorance of the cause of any fact or effect not that we think that chance was itself the cause.

Henry Fergus.

The doctrine of chances is the bible of the fool.

There is no doubt such a thing as chance; but I see no reason why providence should not make use of it.

Simms.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art so not able to make an oyster!.

Jeremy Taylor.

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases which he does not choose to subscribe openly with his own sign manual.

Coleridge.

The mines of knowledge are often laid bare by the hazel wand of chance.

Tupper.

Many shining actions owe their success to chance, though the general or statesman runs away with the applause.

Home.

Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend on such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man’s hands to set the tables, still he would not be certain to win the game.

Herbert.

How often events, by chance, and unexpectedly, come to pass which you had not dared even to hope for!.

Terence.

Chance never writ a legible book; never built a fair house; never drew a neat picture; never did any of these things, nor ever will; nor can it, without absurdity, be supposed to do them, which are yet works very gross and rude, and very easy and feasible, as it were, in comparison to the production of a flower or a tree.

Barrow.

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

Ovid.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

Voltaire.

He who distrusts the security of chance takes more pains to effect the safety which  results from labor. To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says “Leave no stone unturned.”

Bulwer.

There is no such thing as chance or accident, the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

Adam Clarke.

Chance generally favors the prudent.

Joubert.

Criticism Quotes

Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.

George Saintsbury (1845-1933) English literary critic.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, thought the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) English author.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the  wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) British novelist.

A blind man will not thank you for a looking glass.

18^th century English Proverb.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you are perfectly safe.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) American artist.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) American author.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.

Chinese Proverb.

To many people dramatic criticism must seen like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.

John Mason Brown (1900-1969) American essayist, critic)

I find that when I dislike what I see on the stage I can be vastly amusing, but when I write about something I like I find that I am appallingly dull.

Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) British author.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson.

Criticism is the child and handmaid of reflection. It works by censure, and censure implies a standard.

R.G. White.

It is ridiculous for any man to criticise the works of another if he has not distinguished himself by his own performances.

Addison.

Censure Quotes

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Swift

The censure of those who are opposed to us, is the highest commendation that can be given us.

St. Evermond.

He that well and rightly considereth his own works will find little cause to judge hardly of another.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself for the censure of the world; to despise it; to return the like; or to live so as to avoid it. The first of these is usually pretended; the last is almost impossible; the universal practice is for the second.

Swift.

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

Shakespeare.

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.

Demosthenes.

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defence against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

Addison.

Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves.

Juvenal.

Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure, which is useful , to praise which deceives them.

Rochefoucauld.

Horace appears in good humor while her censures, and therefore his censure has the more weight as supposed to proceed from judgment and not from passion.

Young.

If any one speak ill of thee, consider whether he hath truth on his side; and if so, reform thyself, that his censures may not affect thee.

Epictetus.

The villain’s censure is extorted praise.

Pope.

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause, for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing.

Hume.

He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own.

E.L. Magoon.

It is impossible to indulge in habitual severity of opinion upon our fellow men without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings.

H.W. Beecher.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Tryon Edwards.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

George Eliot.

The most censorious are generally the least judicious, or deserving, who, having nothing to recommend them selves, will be finding fault with others. No man envies the merit of another who has enough of his own.

Rule of life.

Our censure of our fellow men, which we are prone to think a proof of our superior wisdom, is too often only the evidence of the conceit that would magnify self, or of the malignity or envy that would detract from others.

Tryon Edwards.

Care Quotes

Care admitted as a guest, quickly turns to be master.

Bovee.

Care is no cure, but rather a corrosive for things that are not to be remedied.

Shakespeare.

Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time; the former grow upon it.

Richter.

They lose the world who buy it, with much care.

Shakespeare.

Our cares are the mothers not only of our charities and virtues, but of our best joys, and most cheering and enduring pleasures.

Simms.

Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest.

Quarles.

To carry care to bed, is to sleep with a pack on your back.

Haliburton.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

Voltaire.

The cares of to-day are seldom those of tomorrow; and when we lie down at night we may safely say to most of our troubles, “ Yes have done your worst, and we shall see you no more.”

Cowper.

Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be.

Dryden.

Life’s cares are comforts; such by heaven designed; he that hath none must make them, or be wretched; cares are employment’s; and without employ the soul is on the rack; the rack of rest, to souls most adverse; action all their joy.

Young.

This world has cares enough to plague us; but he who meditates on others woe, shall, in the meditation, lose his own.

Cumberland.

We can easily manage, if we will only taken each day, the burden appointed for it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow to the weight before we are required to bear it.

John Newton.

“Many of our cares,” says Scott, “are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges.” We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

H.W. Beecher.

The every day cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration, and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon the wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer movie, and the clock stands still.

Longfellow.

Anxious care rests on a basis of heathen worldly mindedness, and of heathen misunderstanding of the character off God.

A. Maclaren.

He that takes his cares on himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast my cares on God; he has bidden me; they cannot burden him.

Bp. Hall

Cares keeps his watch in every old man’s eye; and where care lodges sleep will never lie.

Shakespeare.

Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God’s grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares on the Lord; but even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think, it meritorious to walk burdned.

H.W. Beecher.

Calumny Quotes

Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

Shakespeare.

Back wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes.

Shakespeare.

When conscience is pure it triumphs o’er bitter malice, o’er dark calumny; but if there be in it one single stain, reproaches beat like hammers in the ears.

Alexander Pushkin.

Opposition and calumny are often the brightest tribute that vice and folly can pay to virtue and wisdom.

Ruth erford B. Hayes.

Who stabs my name world stab my person too, did not the hangman’s axe lie in the way.

Crown.

To persevere in one’s duty, and be silent, is the best answer to calumny.

Cecil.

The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; and he who gives credit to the calumny before he knows it is true, is equally guilty. The person traduced is doubly injured; by him who propagates, and by him who credits the slander.

Herodotus.

Neglected calumny soon expires; show that you art hurt, and you give it the appearance of truth.

Tacitus.

Close thine ear against him that opens his mouth against another. If thou receive not his words, they fly back and wound him. If thou receive them, they flee forward and wound thee.

Quarles.

There are calumnies against which even innocence loses courage.

Napoleon.

Those who ought to be most secure against calumny, are generally those who least escape it.

Stanislaus.

I never think it needful to regard calumnies; they are sparks, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves.

Borehaave.

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains, and traverse deserts with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

Colton.

Never chase a lie; if you let it alone, it will soon run itself to death. You can work out a good character faster than calumny can destroy it.

E. Nott.

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.

Ben Jonson.

I never listen to calumnies; because, if they are untrue, I run the risk of being deceived; and if they are true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.

Montesquieu.

Calumny is like the wasp that worries you, which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.

Chamfort.

To persevere in one’s duty and be silent, is the best answer to calumny.

Washington.

Bore Quotes

A bore is a man who when you ask him how he is, tells you.

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech To stir men’s blood; I only speak right on.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Lord Byron (1788-1824) English Poet.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half time his own weight in other people’s patience.

You must be careful about giving any drink whatsoever to a bore. A lit up bore is the worst in the world.

Bore. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Make not thy own person, family, relations or affairs the frequent subject of thy tattle. Say not, My manner an custom is to do thus. I neither eat nor drink in a morning I am apt to be troubled with corns. My child said such a witty thing last night.

If you are a bore, strive to be a rascal also so that you may not discredit virtue.

Few men are more to be shunned than those who have time, but know not how to improve it, and so spend it in wasting the time of their neighbors, talking forever though they have nothing to say.

Tryon Edwards.

The secret to making one’s self tire some, is not to know when to stop.

Voltaire.

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the fails of occupied people.

Bonald.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

Swift.

O, he is as tedious as is a tired horse, or a railing wife; worse than a smoky house.

Shakespeare.

It is hoped that, with all modern improvements, a way will be discovered of getting rid of bores; for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thought that might have entered your mind if they had not been frightened away by the bore.

Byron.

We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary.

Rochefoucauld.

Book Quotes

Immortal sons deifying their sires.

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, writer.

A man’s library is a sort of harem.

No furniture is as charming as books, even if you never open them.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

Every condensation of a good book is a foolish mutilation.

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

A good book is the best of friends, the same today as forever.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

Books and marriage go ill together.

Without books God is silent.

A book is the only immortality.

Choate.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

E.P. Whipple.

Books are embalmed minds.

Bovee.

A good books is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from younder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

T.L. Cuyler.

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.

Plato.

I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Charles Lamb.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead and makes us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Channing.

If a book come from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and authorcraft are of small account to that.

Carlyle.

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Johnson.

Books are the metempsychosis; the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead are scattered, and none shall find them; but behold they are here.

H.W. Beecher.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructions, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Chambers.

Biography Quotes

One of the new painful is all payment!

Lord Byron (1788-1824) English Poet

A great American need not fear the hand of his assassin; his real demise begins only when a friend like Mr Sorensen closes the mouth of his tomb with a stoen.

Every great man now has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Angl-Irish author.

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

The first thing to be done by a biographer in estimating character is to examine the stubs of the victim’s cheque books.

Silas W.Mitchell (1820-1914) American physician, author.

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author.

A well written life is almost as rare as a well spent one.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish author.

Read no history; nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Biography is a region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.

Biography is to give a man some kind of shape after his death.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

Biography is the personal and home aspect of history.

Wilmott.

The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.

Fowler.

Great man have often the shortest biographies. Their real life is in their books or deeds.

There is properly no history, only biography.

Channing.

The remains of great and good men, like Elijah’s mantle, ought to be gathered up and preserved by their survivors; that as their works follow them in the reward of them, they may stay behind in their benefit.

M.Henry.

Most biographies are of little worth. They are panegyrics, not lives. The object is, not to let down the hero; and consequently what is most human, most genuine, most characteristic in his history, is excluded. No department of literature is so false as biography.

Channing.

Rich as we are in biography, a well written life is almost as rare as a well spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons able and willing to furnish the record.

Carlyle.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

Plutarch.

A life that is worth writing at all, is worth writing minutely and truth fully.

Longfellow.

Biography, especially of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.

H.Mann.

Of all studies, the most delightful and useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true; but lives which I have read, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, the utility of truth.

Landor.

Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.

Carlyle.

Those only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination, and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him.

Johnson.

Biography of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic actions for their own and the world’s good.

S. Smiles