Arthur Helps Quotes - Page 3

What a blessing this smoking is! Perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.

Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.

Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.

Wisdom is seldom gained without suffering.

The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.

No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.

We should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts which will be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shiftings of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance and sympathy.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.

Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.

It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.

There are few who would need advisers, if they were only accustomed to appeal to themselves in their calmest, holiest moments. If, when embarrassed with doubt as to any course of action, they would turn aside from the immediate tumult of the world, and from the vain speaking of those who "darken counsel by words without knowledge;" and would then commune with their hearts alone, at night, the heavens their silent counsellors, they would act not always in accordance with the wise men of this world, but with that wisdom which bringeth peace.

Selfishness, when it is punished by the world, is mostly punished because it is connected with egotism.

War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people.

No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.

Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.

Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.

The man who could withstand, with his fellow-men in single line, a charge of cavalry may lose all command of himself on the occurrence of a fire in his own house, because of some homely reminiscence unknown to the observing bystander.

It is in length of patience, endurance and forbearance that so much of what is good in mankind and womankind is shown.

It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.

A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.

The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.

They tell us that "Pity is akin to Love;" if so, Pity must be a poor relation.

Pride, if not the origin, is the medium of all wickedness-the atmosphere without which it would instantly die away.

People resemble still more the time in which they live, than they resemble their fathers.