Gossip Quotes

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it made enlargements too.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English Poet.

If it is abuse – why one is always sure to heat of it from one damned good-natured friend or other!.

R.B. Sheridan (1751-1816) Anglo-Irish dramatist.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American author.

Alas! They had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet.

There is a demon that plus wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles into space.

Alexander Dumas (1802-1870) French author.

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

Walter Winchell (1897-1972) American columnist.

Gossip: sociologists on a mean and petty scale.

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) American president.

Nobody’s interested in sweetness and light.

Hedda Hopper (1890-1966) American film actress, gossip columnist.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I will show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

Barbara Walters (b.1931) American television personality.

Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously.

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author.

At every word a reputation dies.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English Poet.

Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American author.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist, philosopher.

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true.

The come together like the coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.

William Congreve (1670-1729) English dramatist.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

C.C. Colton (1780-1832) English author.

In scandal as in robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.

Backbite. To “speak of a man as you find him” when he can’t find you,

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American author.

Tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.

Saint (3-67) Apostle to the Gentiles.

She poured a little social sewage into his ears.

George Meredith (1828-1909) English author.

Ah. Well, the truth is always one thing, but in a way it’s the other thing, the gossip, that counts. It shows where peoples’ hearts lie.

Paul Scott (1920-1978) British author.

Gossip has been well defined as putting two and two together, and making it five.

I hold it to be a fact, that if all persons knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends In the world.

Pascal.

News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be thought intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned.

Zimmermann.

When of a gossiping circle it was asked “what are they doing?” the answer was, “Swapping lies.”

There is a set of malicious, prating, prudent gossips, both male and female, who murder characters to kill time; and will rob a young fellow of his good name before he has years to know the value of it.

Sheridan.

Gospel Quotes

My heart has always assured and reassured me that the gospel of Christ must be a Divine reality. The sermon on the mount cannot be merely a human production.

This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it.

Daneil Webster.

All the gospels, in my judgment, date back to the first century, and are substantially be the authors to whom they are attributed.

Renan.

The shifting systems of false religion are continually changing their places; but the gospel of Christ is the same forever. While other false lights are extinguished, this true light ever shineth.

T.L. Cuyler

So comprehensive are the doctrines of the gospel, that they involve all moral truth known by man; so extensive are the precepts, that they require every virtue, and forbid every sin. Nothing has been added, either by the labors of philosophy or the progress of human knowledge.

Did you ever notice that while the gospel sets before us a higher and more blessed heaven than any other religion, its hell is also deeper and darker than any other?

Warren.

I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel. Neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able to compare or explain it. There is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the human mind. What happiness it gives to those who believe it! What marvels there which those admire who reflect upon it!.

Napoleon.

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees, and flowers, and clouds, and stars.

Luther.

The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpreter of all revelations, and key to all the seeming contradictions of truth in the physical and moral world.

Hugh Miller.

We can learn nothing of the gospel except by feeling its truths. There are some sciences that may be learned by the head, but the science of Christ crucified can only be learned by the heart.

Spurgeon.

The gospel in all its doctrines and duties appears infinitely superior to any human composition. It has no mark of human composition. It has no mark of human ignorance, imperfection, or sinfulness, but bears the signature of divine wisdom, authority, and importance, and is most worthy of the supreme attention and regard of all intelligent creatures.

Emmons.

There is not a book on earth so favorable to all the kind and to all the sublime affections, or so unfriendly to hatred, persecution, tyranny, injustice, and every sort of malevolence as the gospel. It breathes, throughout, only mercy, benevolence, and peace.

Beattie.

Goodness Quotes

People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German dramatist, poet.

When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.

Mae West (1892-1980) American film actress.

There are two perfectly good men; one dead, and the other unborn.

Chinese Proverb.

Be not merely good; be good for something.

Thoreau.

In nothing do men approach so nearly to the gods as in doing good to men.

Cicero.

There may be a certain pleasure in vice, but there is a higher in purity and virtue. The most commanding of all delights is the delight in goodness. The beauty of holiness is but one beauty, but it is the highest. It is the loss of the sense of sin and shame that destroys both men and states.

Independent.

He that is a good man, is three quarters of his way toward the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called.

South.

We may be as good as we please, if we please to be good.

Barrow.

Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life. It points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.

Daniel Webster.

We can do more good by being good than in any other way.

Rowland Hill.

If there be a divine providence, no good man need be afraid to do right; he will only fear to do wrong.

Haygood.

To be doing good is man’s most glorious task.

Sophocles.

To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.

Tryon Edwards.

It is a law of our humanity, that man must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

F.W. Robertson.

By desiring what is perfectly good, even where we do not quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil, widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

George Eliot.

Let a man be never so ungrateful or inhuman, he shall never destroy the satisfaction of my having done a good office.

Seneca.

The good are heaven’s peculiar care.

Ovid.

All the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to tale in my welfare.

Byron.

He who loves goodness harbors angels, reverse reverence, and lives with God.

Emerson.

He is good that does good to others. Of he suffers for the good he does, he is better still; and if he suffers from them to whom he did good, he has arrived to that height of goodness that nothing but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if it proves his death, his virtue is at its summit; it is heroism complete.

Bruyere.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform and benefit the neighbors and passengers, but not the owner within.

Swift.

He that does good to another, does also good to himself; not only in the consequence, but in the very act of doing it; for the consciousness of well doing is an ample reward.

Seneca.

A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men to their friends.

Bp. Hall.

Good Breeding Quotes

Good-breeding is benevolence in trifles, or the preference of others to ourselves in the daily occurrences of life.

Lord Chatham.

Good-breeding is surface Christianity.

O.W. Holmes.

Good-breeding is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by conversing with good company.

Cato.

One principal point of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

Swift.

Nothing can constitute good-breeding which has not good nature for its foundation.

Bulwer.

Good-Breeding is the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them.

Chesterfield.

A man endowed with great perfections, without good-breeding, is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but always wants change for his ordinary occasions.

Steele.

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Fielding.

Good qualities are the substantial riches of the mind; but it is good-breeding that sets them off to advantage.

Locke.

The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.

Chesterfield.

A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill-manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invited and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duck of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one to Sir Robert Walpole.

Chesterfield.

Among well-bred people, a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

Hume.

Good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.

Addison.

Virtue itself often offends, when coupled with bad manners.

Middleton.

The summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule: “Behave to all others as you would they should behave to you”.

Fielding.

There are few defects in our nature so glaring as not to be veiled from observation by politeness and good breeding.

Stanislaus.

The highest point of good-breeding is to show a very nice regard to your own dignity, and with that in your own heart, to express your value for the man above you.

Steele.

One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.

Addison.

As ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, so good-breeding is an expedient to make fools and wise men equal.

Steele.

Wisdom, Valor, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behavior, called good breeding.

Steele.

Gold Quotes

Gold is the fool’s curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.

Feltham.

The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless; the last corruption of degenerate man.

Johnson.

It is much better to have your gold in the hand than in the heart.

Fuller.

Gold, like the sun, which melts wax, but hardens clay, expands great souls and contracts bad hearts.

Rivarol.

It is observed of gold, in an old epigram, that to have it is to be in fear, and to want it is to be in sorrow.

Johnson.

To purchase heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can live be bought with gold? Are friendship’s pleasures to be sold? No all that’s worth a wish a thought, fair virtue gives unbribed, un bought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, let nobler views engage thy mind.

Johnson.

There is no place so high that an ass laden with gold cannot reach it.

Rojas.

Midas longed for gold. He got it, so that whatever he touched became gold, and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it.

Carlyle.

There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other is the camp, gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both, may indeed attain the highest station, but he must know something more to keep it.

Colton.

Give him gold enough, and marry him to a puppet, or an aglet-baby, or an old trot with never a tooth in her head, thought she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

Shakespeare.

A mask of gold hides all deformities.

Dekker.

How quickly nature falls to revolt when gold becomes her object.

Shakespeare.

O cursed lust of gold? When, for thy sake, the fool throws up his interest in both words, first starved in this, then damned in that to come?

Blair.

How few, like Daniel, have God and gold together.

Bp. Villiers.

Gold! In all ages the curse of mankind! To gain thee, men yield honor, affection and lasting renown, and for thee barter the crown of eternity.

P.Benjamin.

A vain man’s motto is” “Win gold and wear it”; a generous, “Win gold and share it”; a miser’s “Win gold and hoard it”; a profligates’s, “Win gold and spend it”; a broker’s, “Win gold and lend it”; a gambler’s “Win gold and lose it; a wise man’s, “ Win gold and use it.”

They who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this, have at least one thin to plead in defence of their idolatry the power of their idol. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.

Colton.

Mammon has enriched his thousands and has damned his ten thousands.

South.

As the thousands tries gold, so gold tries man.

Chilo.

Gold begets in brethren hate;

Gold in families debate;

Golds does friendship separate;

Gold does civil wars create.

Abraham Cowley, Anacreontics : Gold,

Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Tennyson, Locksley Hall.

O love of gold! Thou meanest of amour!

Edward Young, night thoughts.

I shall not help crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. I shall not aid in pressing down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.

Glory Quotes

Avoid shame but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.

Sydney Smith (1771-1845_ English writer, clergyman.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) English Poet.

Military glory the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist, poet.

I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting.

The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

What is glory? It is to have a lot of nonsense talked about you.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French novelist.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.
Pliny.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

Cicero.

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakespeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce.

Francis Wayland.

Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves. Without that, the conqueror is nought but the foist slave.

Thompson.

As to be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature, to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of man.

Addison.

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Goldsmith.

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.

Cowper.

Like madness is the glory of this life.

Shakespeare.

He that first likened glory to a shadow, did better than he was aware of; they are both vain. Glory, also, like the shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.

Montaigne.

By skillful conduct and artificial means a person may make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel be wanting, all is vanity, and will not last.

Goethe.

Two things ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory that the very best have had their calumniators, and the very worst their panegyrists.

Colton.

Let us not disdain glory too much; nothings is finer, except virtue. The height if happiness would be to unite both in this life.

Chateaubriand.

The shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

Home.

Those great actions whose luster dazzles us are represented by politicians as the effects of deep design, whereas they are commonly the effects of caprice and passion.

Rochefoucauld.

The glory of a people, and of an age, is always the work of a small number of great men , and disappears with them.

Grimm.

Gift Quotes

It is will, and not the gift makes the giver.

Lessing.

The manner of giving shows the character of the giver, more than the gift itself.

Lavater.

There is a gift that is almost a blow, and there is a kind word that is munificence; so much is there in the way of doing things.

A Helps.

Give what you have. To some one it may be better than you dare to think.

Longfellow.

We should give as we should receive, cheerfully quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

Seneca.

To reveal its complacence by gifts, is one of the native dialects of love.

Mrs. Sigourney.

Serving God with out little, is the way to make it more; and we must never think that wasted with which God is honored, or men are blest.

Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving.

John Hall.

A gift, its kind, its values, and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you, may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.

Lavater.

Presents which our love for the donor has rendered precious are ever the most acceptable.

Ovid.

People do not care to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draft upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there.

Mackenzie.

He who loves with purity considers not the gift of the lover, but the love of the giver.

Thomas a Kempis

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

George Eliot.

Examples are few of men ruined by giving. Men are heroes in spending cravens in what they give.

Bovee.

When a friend asks, there is no tomorrow.

Herbert.

When thou makest presents, let them be of such things as will as long; to the end they may be in some sort immortal, and may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver.

Fuller.

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.

Balfour.

It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace. How little does a smile cost!

Bruyere.

Every gift, though it be small, is in reality great if given with affection.

Pindar.

The secret of giving affectionately is great and rare; it requires address to do it well; otherwise we lose instead of deriving benefit from it.

Corneille.

Independence is of more values than any gifts; and to receive gifts is to lose it. Men most commonly seek to oblige thee only that they may engage thee to serve them.

Saadi.

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Shakespeare.

The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious.

Luther.

Gifts are as the gold which adorns the temple; grace is like the temple that sanctifies the gold.

Burkitt.

Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle.

Lavater.

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

Seneca.

He gives not best who gives most; but he gives most who gives best. If I cannot give bountifully, yet I will give freely, and what I want in my hand, I will supply by my heart.

Warwick.

Gifts weigh like mountains on a sensitive heart. To me they are oftener punishments than pleasures.

Mad. Fee.

Gentleman Quotes

I can make a lord, but only God almighty can make a gentleman.
King James I of England (1566-1625)

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.
18th century English Proverb.

He was the product of an English public school and university ….no scholar, but essentially a gentleman.
H.Seton Merriman (1862-1903) English novelist.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish author.

Almost an Emperor and not quite a gentleman.

He is every other inch a gentleman.
Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author.

I am parshial to ladies if they are nice. I suppose it is my nature. I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice it.

It is at unimportant moments that a man is a gentleman. At important moments he ought to be something better.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) British author.

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time.
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) Italian playwright, author.

I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English novelist.

The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.
R.S. Surtees (1803-1864) English novelist.

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanor; honorable himself, and in his judgment of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man such is a true gentleman.

The flowering of civilization is the finished man the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power the gentleman.
Emerson.
Education begins the gentleman, bit reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.
Locke.

The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just, and amiable, perfect the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. And the study of such a taste or relish will be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good as agreeable and polite.
Shaftesbury.

Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name.
Huxley.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman repose in energy.
Emerson.

It is a grand old name, that of gentleman, and has been recognized as a rank and power in all stages of society. To possess this character is a dignity of itself, commanding the instinctive homage of every generous mind, and those who will not bow to titular rank will yet do homage to the gentleman. His qualities depend not upon fashion or manners, but upon moral worth; not on personal possessions, but on personal qualities.
S. Smiles.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will, alone, gentilize, if unmixed with can’t; and I know nothing else, which, alone, will.
Coleridge.

Perhaps property is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman. Elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to nobleman; and majesty to kings.
Hazlitt.

Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are frequent: but a true gentleman is what one seldom sees.
Steele.

The real gentleman should be gentle in everything, at least in everything that depends on himself, carriage, temper, constructions, aims, desires. He ought therefore to be mild, calm, quiet, even, temperate, not hasty in judgment, not exorbitant in ambition, not oppressive; for these things are contrary to gentleness.
Hare.

Genius Quotes

The divine egoism that is genius.
Mary Webb (1881-1927) British author.

The dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) British author.

To mediocrity genius is unforgivable.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri Amiel (1821-1881) Swiss philosopher, poet.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) English author.

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
Robert Lynd (1879-1949) Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) British novelist.

If we are to have genius we must put up with the inconvenience of genius, and that the world will never do; it wants geniuses, but would like them just like other people.
George Moore (1852-1933) Irish author.

Since when was genius found respectable?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) English poet.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied.
John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, dramatist.

The most effective way of shutting our minds against a great man’s ideas is to take them for granted and admit he was great and have done with him.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Anglo-Irish playwright, critic.

Everybody denies I am a genius but nobody ever called me one!
Orson Welles (1915-1985) American filmmaker.

Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book.

A man who is a genius and doesn’t know it probably isn’t.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish artist.

Genius is infinite pain staking.
Longfellow.

Genius us nothing but continued attention.
Helvetius.

Genius is a superior aptitude to patience.
Buffoon.

I know no such thing as genius; it is nothing but labor and diligence.
Hogarth.

Genius is but a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in a particular direction.
Johnson.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies which are out of the reach of the rules of art; a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.
Sir Joshua Reynolds.

A man’s genius is always, in the beginning of life, as much unknown to himself as to others; and it is only after frequent trials, attended with success, that he dares think himself equal to those undertaking in which those who have succeeded have fixed the admiration of mankind.
Hume.

The popular notion of genius is of one who can do almost everything except make a living.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
Ruskin.

The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.
Colton.

Generosity Quotes

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore of nicely calculated less or more.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English poet.

Liberality  consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well timed.

Jena de la Bruyere (1645-1696) French writer, moralist.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom ultimately of our coercion.

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) American critic

As for the largest hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our chequebooks? “Self”

Eden Philpotts (1862-1960) British author.

Don’t be selfish. If you have something you do not want, and know someone who has no use for it, give. In this way you can be generous without expenditure of self-denial and also help another to be the same.

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author.

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

It’s better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.

Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.

Duncan.

True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed on us by law. It is a rule imposed by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.

Goldsmith.

Generosity, wrong placed, becometh a vice; a princely mind will undo a private family.

Fuller.

True generosity does not consist in obeying every impulse of humanity, in following blind passion for our guide, and impairing our circumstances by present benefactions, so as to render us incapable of future ones.

Goldsmith.

There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else. A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody; or else, in his simplicity, he robs his family to help strangers, and so becomes brother to a beggar.

Spurgeon.

For his bounty, there was no winter in’t; an autumn ‘twas that grew the more by reaping.

Shakespeare.

As the sword of the best tempered metal is most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behavior to their inferiors.

Fuller.

The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.

Lavater.

He that gives all, though but little, give much; because God looks not to the quanity of the gift, but to the quality if the givers.

Quarles.

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.

Horace Mann.

A generous man places the benefits he confers beneath his feet; those he receives, nearest his heart.

One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world is, their finding so little there; generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason that countrymen escape the smallpox, because they meet with no one to give it them.

The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others, lives unblest.

Home.

Generosity is the accompaniment of high birth; pity and gratitude are its attendants.

Corneille.

Some are unwisely liberal, and more delight to give presents than to pay debts.

Sir P.Sidney.

A man there was, an they called him mad; the more he gave, the more he had.

Bunyan.

What I gave, I have; what I spent, I had; what I kept, I lost.

Old Epitaph.

Gambling Quotes

There are two great pleasures in gambling; that of winning and that of losing.

French proverb.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich something for nothing.

It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.

George Washington (1732-1799) American president.

No wife can endure a gambling husband unless he is a steady winner.

Lord Dewar (1864-1930) British writer.

The only man who makes money following the races is one who does it with a broom and shovel.

Elbert Hubbard (1865-1915) American author.

Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one’s flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not the will.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author.

Death and dice level all distinctions.

Samuel Foote (1720-1777) English dramatist.

Gambling is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.

Colton.

Gambling is a kind of tacit confession that those engaged therein do, in general, exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes; and therefore they cast lots to determine on whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer.

Blackstone.

Gambling with cards, or dice, or stocks, is all one thing; it is getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

H.W. Beecher.

By gambling we lose both our time and treasure, two things most precious to the life of man.

Feltham.

It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to gamble; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.

Lavater.

Some play for gain; to pass time others play; both play the fool; who gets by play is loser in the end.

Heath.

I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice box desperately in his hand. All that follows in his fatal career, from that time, is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.

Cumberland.

Curst is the wretch enslaved to such a vice, who ventures life and soul upon the dice.

Horace.

The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined; he adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide renounces earth to forfeit heaven.

Colton.

All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of others, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.

Whately.

Keep flax from fire, and youth from gaming.

Franklin.

Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of  iniquity, and the father of mischief.

Washington.

Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square if ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants and their nearest relatives.

Zimmermann.

There is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the card table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexions are the natural indication of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps are not able to repay her midnight watchings.

Steele.

Although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice, or a deficiency of excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, patriotism, or virtue.

Landor.

An assembly of the states or a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and gave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth, or distinctions.

Bruyere.

Future Quotes

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we have learned something from yesterday.

John Wayne (1907-1979) American film actor.

The future us called “perhaps”, which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

Tennessee Williams (1914-1983) American playwright.

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

C.F. Kettering (1876-1958) American engineer, playwright.

I have a vision of the future, chum. The workers flats in fields of soya beans Tower up like silver pencils.

John Betjeman (1906-1984) British poet.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

L.E. Landon.

We are always looking to the future; the present does not satisfy us. Our ideal, whatever it may be, lies further on.

Gillett.

Trust no future however pleasant; let the dead past bury its dead. Act – act in the living present, heart within, and God overhead.

Longfellow.

How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill! It is only the thought of the future that makes them great.

Richter.

The veil which covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand of mercy.

Bulwer.

What is already passed is not more fixed than the certainty that what is future will grow out of what has already passed, or is now passing.

G.B. Cheever.

The future is always a fairy land to the young.

Sala.

Age and sorrow have the gift of reading the future by the past.

Farrar.

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.

E.H. Chapin.

Look not mournfully to the past it comes not back again; wisely improve the present it is thin; go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and with a manly heart.

Longfellow.

God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless.

Augustine.

The best preparation for the future, is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.

G. Macdonald.

The future, only, is our goal. We are never living, but only hoping to live; and looking forward always to being happy, it is inevitable that we never are so.

Pascal.

We always live prospectively; never retrospectively, and there is no abiding moment.

Jacobi.

Oh, blindness to the future! Kindly given, that each may fill the circle marked by heaven.

Pope.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is the only method of the first.

H.W. Beecher.

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

I have seen the future and it works.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Future state Quotes

There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.

Cicero.

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news? If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.

Addison.

If there were no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.

Richter.

We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that now pass over before us like shadows, will stay in our presence forever.

Bulwer.

It is the divinity that stirs within us. This heaven itself that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.

Addison.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

Landor.

I feel my immortality oversweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, an like the eternal thunders of the deep, peal to my ears this truth “Thou livest forever.”

Byron.

A voice within us speaks that startling word, “Man, thou shalt never die!” Celestial voices hymn it to our souls; according harps, by angel fingers touched, do sound forth still the song of our great immortality.

Dana.

There is none but fears a future state; and when the most obdurate swear they do not, their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.
Dryden.

My mind can take no hold on the present world nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force toward a future and better state of being.

Fichte.

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.

E.H. Chapin.

The dead carry our thoughts to another and a nobler existence. They teach us, and especially by all the strange and seemingly untoward circumstances of their departure from this life, that they and we shall live in a future state forever.

O. Dewey.

We believe that we shall know each other’s forms hereafter, and, in the bright fields of he better land, shall call the lost dead to us.

N.P. Willis.

Divine wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?

Mad. De Stael.

The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings; to keep our mind’s eye and our heart’s eye ever fixed on the land of promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it.

Hare.

Another life, if it were not better than this, would be less a promise than a threat.

J.P. Senn.

What a world were this; how unendurable its weight, if they whom death had sundered did not meet again?

Southey.

You ask if we shall know our friends in heaven. Do you suppose we are greater fools there than here?

Emmons.

Freedom Quotes

To have freedom is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess.

Rahel.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Epictetus.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

Montesquieu.

The cause of freedom is identified with the destinies of humanity, and in whatever part of the world it gains ground, by and by it will be a common gain to all who desire it.

Kossuth.

The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people’s energy, intellect, and virtues. The savage makes his boast of freedom. But what is its worth? He is, indeed, free from what he calls thy yoke of civil institutions. But other and worse chains bind him. The very privation of civil government is in effect a chain; for, by withholding protection from property it virtually shackles the arm of industry, and forbids exertion for the melioration of his lot. Progress, the growth of intelligence and power, is the end and boon of liberty; and without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.

Channing.

This is what I call the American idea of freedom a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice the unchanging law of God.

Theodore Parker.

Void of freedom, what would virtue be?

Lamartine.

There is no legitimacy on earth but in a government which is the choice of the nation.

Joseph Bonaparte.

The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children.

Havard.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Goethe.

True freedom consists with the observance of law. Adam was as free in paradise as in the wilds to which he was banished for its transgression.

Thornton.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

J.S. Mill.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, and all slaves beside.

Cowper.

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, these are principles that have guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Jefferson.

There must be no tampering with the delicate machinery by which religious liberty and equality are secured, and no fostering of any spirit which would tend to destroy that machinery.

James Cardinal Gibbons.

A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.

Walter Lippman.

Indignation boils my blood at the thought of the heritage we are throwing away; at the thought that, with few exceptions, the fight for freedom is left to the poor, forlorn and defenseless, and to the few radicals and revolutionaries who would make use of liberty to destroy, rather than to maintain, American institutions.

Arthur Garfield Hays.

Men are free when they are in a living homeland…. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is the rattling of chains, always was.

D.H. Lawrence.

Real freedom comes from the mastery, though knowledge, of historic conditions and race character which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress.

Hamilton Wright Mabile.

I believe in freedom social, economical, domestic, political, mental and spiritual.

Elbert Hubbard.

Fortune Quotes

The wheel of fortune turns round incessantly, and who can say to himself, “I shall today be uppermost.

Confucius.

Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry, and is as often trundling in a wheelbarrow as lolling in a coach and six.
Goldsmith.

It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune; favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Bacon.

We make our fortunes, and we all them fate.

Alroy.

Fortune is like the market, where many times if you can stay a little the price will fall; and again it is sometimes like a Sibyl’s offer, which at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price.

Bacon.

May I always have a heart superior, with economy suitable, to my fortune.

Shenstone.

Human life is more governed by fortune than by reason.

Hume.

Fortune does not change men; it only unmakes them.

Riccoboni.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together; so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Bacon.

We should manage our fortune as we do our health enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity.

Rochefoucauld.

Ovid finely compares a broken fortune to a falling column; the lower it sinks, the greater weight it is obliged to sustain. When a man’s circumstances are such that he has no occasion to borrow, he finds numbers willing to lend him; but should his wants be such that he sues for a trifle, it is two to one whether he will be trusted with the smallest sum.

Goldsmith.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and files out at the window.

Montesquieu.

“Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life,” but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

Mark Twain.

Every man is the marker of his own fortune.

Tattler.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

Rousseau.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

Saadi.

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

J.R. Lowell.

Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.

Ben Jonson.

The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.

Goldsmith.

High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light.

Rochefoucauld.

Fortune, to show us her power, and abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

Montaigne.

Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.

Publius Syrus.

It requires greater virtues to support good than bad fortune.

Rochefoucauld.

There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads upon the heels of great and unexpected riches.

Bruyere.