Samuel Laman Blanchard Quotes

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem: There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound, Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.

Social and political life is a Society for the Diffusion of Mendacity .

The scarcity of truth is atoned for by the abundance of affidavits; if a rumor be impugned, its veracity is easily strengthened by additional emphasis of affirmation, until at last "everybody says so," and then it is undeniable.

Man will take anything you like, except warning.

What if two negatives make an affirmative ...does it follow that two nobodies shall be some body?

For the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump: and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler!

It seems to me that, with but slight reserve and modification, we may apply to our departed friend his own pathetic and beautiful elegy upon another.

Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment "Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!

How often does it happen that an obscure line finds its way into a periodical... is requoted in every book that comes out during the next three months, and "sleeps again!

Shall we not rejoice then and revel in the glorious liberty of extract, and quote to the thousandth line? Shall we not have pages like the Pyramids?

Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation.

When the error is universal, it is supposed to end. The adoption of the foundling establishes its consanguinity.

For more than twenty years he [Blanchard] toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits.

As success converts treason into legitimacy, so belief converts fiction into fact, and "nothing is but what is not.

When a story has gone the grand circuit, and travels back to us uncontradicted, we may reasonably begin to relax in our belief of it. If nobody questions it, it is manifestly a fiction; if it passes current, it is almost sure to be a counterfeit. The course of truth never yet ran smooth.

Everybody's word is worth Nobody's taking.

So, in our wisdom and fair justice we go on - "Giving to dust that is a little gilt, More laud than gold e'er dusted;" proclaiming the merits of the bad wine, and making it, by every token, as enticing as we can; and blessing our stars that the good will be found out by its flavor "without our stir." As it is inestimable, we seek not to win esteem for it; as it is beyond all praise, we bestow no praises upon it.

We feel bound to be punctual and conscientious with those we are indifferent about; while we can afford at any time, on the frostiest night, to be an hour after our appointment with the single gentleman who occupies an apartment in our heart's core.

It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.

It is an odd mode of diminishing one's own weakness to ask a friend to lend us the equal force of his.

Give me to live with Love alone And let the world go dine and dress; For Love hath lowly haunts... If life's a flower, I choose my own 'T is "love in Idleness".

The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.