Augustus William Hare Quotes

Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.

The mind is like a trunk: if well-packed, it holds almost every thing; if ill-packed, next to nothing.

Curiosity is little more than another name for Hope.

The feeling is often the deeper truth, the opinion the more superficial one.

The cross was two pieces of dead wood; and a helpless, unresisting Man was nailed to it; yet it was mightier than the world, and triumphed, and will ever triumph over it.

How few are our real wants! and how easy is it to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.

People cannot go wrong, if you don't let them. They cannot go right, unless you let them.

Seeking is not always the way to find.

To know the hight [sic] of a mountain, one must climb it.

True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits, but in a due estimate of them.

Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.

Light, when suddenly let in, dazzles and hurts and almost blinds us: but this soon passes away, and it seems to become the only element we can exist in.

How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts when we are surprised to find our prayers answered.

Practical life teaches us that people may differ and that both may be wrong: it also teaches us that people may differ and both be right. Anchor yourself fast in the latter faith, or the former will sweep your heart away.

One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.

How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

How often one sees people looking far and wide for what they are holding in their hands? Why! I am doing it myself at this very moment.

A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.

When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she does not at once expose herself impudently to the public gaze; but for a time remains veiled in a transparent cloud, till she gradually acquires courage to endure the looks and admiration of beholders.

A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene.

I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.

If you wish a general to be beaten, send him a ream full of instructions; if you wish him to succeed, give him a destination, and bid him conquer.

We like slipping, but not falling; our real anxiety is to be tempted enough.

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.